Violent Tendencies

Do you want to really piss me off? I mean, make me so angry that I want to wrap your head in duct tape and beat you with something dead and smelly? Talk loudly or use your cell phone during a movie anywhere remotely near me. I cannot, and will not, tolerate it.

Going to the movies is a sacred experience for me. Next to my dad, film was my first great love. I go to be fed. I go to be moved. I go to be transported to another place or time. I go to feel, to learn and to be more alive. I go to laugh or, sometimes, to just escape and get a break from the three million voices that scream at me outside the theater.

I do NOT go to the movies to listen to stupid and mind-blowingly clueless people have full on conversations with either their movie buddy or, even worse, on their cell phone. The entire audience can see the damn thing light up when you text, dumb-ass!

I had a fairly rough and pretty emotional weekend. So I took myself to a movie last night. The house was packed and I was smashed next to two teenage girls that were talking and texting the entire time! Any friend who had ever gone to the movies with me knows that I will turn around and death-stare down anyone talking or kicking my chair. I will flat out yell "Shut up!" if needed. I do not merely roll my eyes and politely ignore teenagers having a mid-film popcorn fight in front of me nor did I ignore these girls last night. I leaned over, gave them my best adult "you are so busted" look and threw my arms out as though to clearly say, "Are you fucking kidding me?" They rolled their eyes and kept right on talking. I ignored it as long as I could but every muscle in my body was screaming "annihilate immediately" and the volcanic rage in my chest had reached a boiling point. Every time a new text came, with it's cute little "bling" sound, and the phone lit up like Vegas I wanted to cram it down her throat. I finally leaned over and slowly said, between clenched teeth, "Chill out." They laughed.

There were no places to move to. I tried the labored breathing I used when giving birth, I invoked my favorite mantra, I thought about candlelight and the sound of the ocean. And the phone rang. She answered it and started talking. I gave up and was about to burst into tears for the hundredth time that day when she hung up the phone and they got up and walked out.

I thanked the gods and wished them both cold sores and bad hair days for a month.

The worst is babies and small children. People in other places take babies and small children to movies too, but Utah is the only place I've lived where parents bring their kids to a movie and let them run freely up and down the aisles just like they do in Sacrament meeting. Or they will walk their babies, who are holding onto their fingers, up and down the aisles. Or play with them and lift them above their heads and make them giggle. I love kids and am a baby nut - but not when I am at a movie! I have kids too and many times, when they were little, I went to the movies specifically to NOT hear them cry and whine and breathe. If you can't afford a babysitter, tough shit. Stay home. I'm fine with the newborns that sleep and nurse the entire time - I will gladly share my cinematic worship service with them. But if they make a peep then get up and take them out. I know it sucks to have to do that. I know you want to see the movie. I know it's hard to have little kids. I did it alone and there were many times I just couldn't go to a movie or had to get up and leave. That's called parenthood. Welcome to it.

So, please Internetland, when you go to the movies Be Quiet. Be respectful. Be considerate and sensitive to others. Next time your neighbor leans over to talk, place your finger over your lips and don't engage. (Or at least use this great invention called minimal whispering.) Turn off your freaking phone and leave your kids at home. If you break these rules you might just get a 64oz. Diet Coke lobbed at your head.

Don't say I didn't warn you.