Fun fact about me: I am HORRIBLE when it come to movie trivia. Unless your questions are about Dirty Dancing, Pretty Woman, Meet the Parents, Wedding Crashers, The Hangover or Pitch Perfect (the original), I’m pretty much useless. Don’t ever pick me for a teammate for movie trivia night.
On average, Mr. KK and I average possibly less than one movie per year. Some of you are probably gasping at this, because you frequent the movies and have seen all nominees come awards season. Us? Unless there is a movie that we are dying to see/features one of our most favorite actors, we’ll maybe catch it on tv.
Just because we’re not big movie buffs, we don’t want to project that onto the Little Mister. So today, we took him to his very first movie: The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.
We really talked this event up to the Little Mister. He has a tendency to be excited about something for a while, but when it’s ‘go time’ – i.e., time to change out of his pajamas and actually leave the house – he all of a sudden doesn’t want to go.
Needless to say, we made this movie event feel better than the second coming of the Lord. And Little Mister was right there with us.
Not being seasoned movie goers, I was under the impression that we could just go to our local movie theater and purchase tickets for the movie that was starting in 20 minutes. You know, how you used to be able to go to the movies. Oh, but no. Now, all off the tickets must be bought online (fine) and you choose your seats ahead of time. When I checked Saturday night, all shows in our theater only had seats in the front row available. I was not taking Little Mister to his first movie experience and making him sit in the neck-ache first row.
We ended up getting online tickets to a theater one town over, where we didn’t have to choose our tickets ahead of time. And guess what? It was fine. In fact, there was only a few families in the theater when we arrived, trough-sized popcorn in hand.
This is when I met the most annoying movie goers on the planet. If I wasn’t with my child, I would have truly said something snarky to them because they deserved it.
Not the best view in this video, but you can see how they have basically moved into the movie theater.
The theater was not large, and all of the seating was accessible by one aisle along the left side of the theater. We found a row that was occupied on one side by a family but had 5 free seats all the way against the wall.
Let me set the scene for you: the family consisted of 7 women of varying ages, who more or less appeared to have moved into the movie theater, claiming the row as their new home. Each one was reclined in the movie seats (fine), legs propped up, pretending people weren’t trying to get into their row. They had brought blankets with them from home (BLANKETS – like the ones from their couches), and the walkway in front of them and the seats was littered with backpacks (yes, BACKPACKS) so much so, that no one could walk through if they tried (let alone my 4 year old who could trip on air).
As I tried to enter the row, the mother hen – who was sitting on the end – looked at me with a look that said, “Really? You’re going to come in our row?” (I could have slapped her on that look alone.)
“Do you think we could get by?” I asked, as Little Mister asked loudly, “Are we going to sit here???”
She looked down the row to the empty seats, then to all of the shit on the floor, then to me. “We figured anyone wanting to sit there would enter from the other side.” She said, then went back to sipping her soda.
“This is the only way into the row,” I pointed out.
She made a half-hearted attempt to look down the aisle and then back at me. Her little brood at there avoiding looking at us, staring at their phones and stuffing popcorn in their faces.
“Come on, buddy,” I said to Little Mister, guiding him up the stairs. “We’ll find another place to sit.”
“Yeah,” the mother said to me. “That would probably be best.”
ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME????
We sat in the row behind them, close enough that I could hear her nasally, annoying voice, but far enough away that I could shoot secret looks to Mr. KK and complain about her.
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that the movies were now a place where you practically MOVED IN with your family wearing basically pajamas (as an adult) and bringing half of your living room blankets with you.
Annoying family aside, Little Mister had a great first time at the movies! I’m pretty sure the big tub of popcorn was his favorite part of the day, but he was totally into the movie. He didn’t say a word from the time the lights went down until they came back up
We’re ready for the next movie, and now we’re prepared. I know I need to buy and reserve seats at some theaters a week ahead of time, and I know the family that we need to avoid at all costs. Oh, and we’ll be leaving our blankets at home, thank you very much.
Life of kk 