It’s funny – I’ve never actually wished anyone dead before. Sure, there have been a handful of people I’ve met who I wouldn’t necessarily jump on the subway tracks to save, but the amount of energy I spent trying to mentally will laser beams to shoot from my eyes into your face until you literally burst into flames was staggering.
Like the majority of the other moviegoers in the packed theater, my husband and I slowly lowered ourselves into our seats, our ham flowers still tender from being taken advantage of at the box office. Movies aren’t cheap. Neither are babysitters, which probably means nothing to you because that is a concept as foreign as “consideration”, or “other people”.
Settling in, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me as I heard the familiar noise of a fussy child reverberate from the walls throughout the previews. I buried my face in my popcorn and prayed it was just how the brain rids itself of the residual noise I’d been hearing all day. When the movie started, however, I turned around and realized it was very, very real.
Interstellar is every bit of a three hour movie. And we’re not talking Dances With Wolves three hours, with 90% of it being B roll of amber waves of grain and Kevin Costner talking real slow. This movie is three hours of intense, action packed complex quantum physics shit crucial to the plot that becomes exponentially more difficult to understand as you are trying to tune out a bored toddler.
“We have to do it now because spacetime relativity gravity worm hole fourth dimen- MAMA! MAMA! MAMAMAMA!!! WAAAAAAH!”
[I’m paraphrasing here, because I don’t want to reveal any spoilers, and also because I barely passed physics and still have no idea what was going on.]
I waffled. To get up and find an usher would mean missing at least ten minutes of the film. Plus what if he just gave you a warning or something and it was all for not? But to do nothing meant that every few minutes would be completely lost to your toddler babble/my accompanying seething anger. I spent the movie hoping you would just do the decent thing and not be a selfish sociopath.
I just can’t wrap my head around why you thought this would be a good idea. Trust me – there have been several times (today) that I felt like it was crucial to my sanity to have a family outing. The need to get everyone out of the house is primal. But that’s why God invented Target, sir. Download the Cartwheel app and go get yourself some cute new dish towels where nobody cares if your baby is screaming because theirs is too.
Maybe, as the movie suggests, some day we will discover how to harness gravitational time dilation and I’ll get to experience the movie for the first time in the theater again. But I guess that means you’ll be there too so maybe I’ll just wish chronic lice upon you and your home.
You Suck,
Hannah
Tell the parents who can’t/won’t afford a sitter to 1) go to a freaking matinee so your kid(s) aren’t hallucinating and/or speaking in tongues from being up hours past his/her bedtime. The only exception I believe should be made to this rule is the romantic comedy. That way newly dating couples can get a dose of reality inserted in their Hollywood fairytale version of relationships. Best birth control ever.
Oooh awesome idea! Maybe i could even rent my kids out once in a while for that purpose.
Yet another reason, aside from booze, that I see two movies a year. One, it’s expensive to go to the 21 and up theater and we typically need booze once we’ve been away from our children for ten minutes. And two, I think I’d be locked up if I had to sit through a movie with another teenager or baby again. (Love the MST3000 nod!)
Like … why would you even WANT to take your toddler to a movie? Personally I think that sounds like the shittiest idea ever – for me, let alone the entire rest of the theater. If I were planning to go to a movie, but my sitter fell through, I just wouldn’t go. I’d sit at home and bitch instead.
The only explanation is that you were being punked or this was an episode of that “what would you do?” hidden camera show on NBC to see how jerky people can be. Because taking a kid to see a movie like that is the worst of the worst ideas ever. I would have totally gotten an usher, if those things still exist. We took our kids (3.5 and 1) to see the Penguins of Madagascar and the older one was acting up about 45 minutes in. I even felt shitty about ruining a movie for the other families there, none of whom were exactly silent. But now my kid knows mommy means biznass when she says we will leave the theater this instant if she doesn’t sit down.
Wow people are amazing! What a crazy! I would have been just as pissed! I was nervous taking my 3 year old to her first movie to see Planes, on a weekday, in the afternoon and at one of those theaters that plays movies already released on DVD. I see 1 maybe 2 movies in the theater a year because it’s crazy expensive and usually ends up not great anyway, so I should have just sent $1.50 at Redbox so I could turn it off without feeling bad and I don’t have the money nor trust in babysitters. That’s life when you have kids…sacrifice. Sometimes we don’t get to go out to the movies or the nicer restaurant because we had kids. You are so right about Target too! My kids love taking a trip there because after I have shopped, I let them play in the toy aisles for a bit.