Movie Moments

About an hour ago, I came here to write this post. I typed in a title, and I had my idea. But it just wasn't happening, so I decided to just let it be. I began watching the movie Avatar on the television, and suddenly I had the missing piece to my blogging puzzle.

Have you ever gone to a movie when you probably should have stayed home? Maybe you're distracted with worries. Or perhaps you are just really, really tired. Unless the movie is charged with excitement, you just might drift away. Heck, even if it is, you just might snooze it out. Some years ago I went to a movie matinee with my sister Liz and her husband Dick. The movie was The Fisher King, and was rather dramatic. Actually, as I recall, it was borderline depressing, with a few moments of humor thrown in. Thank you, William Shakespeare, for popularizing comic relief! I believe they had seen the movie already, but Liz wanted to see it again and invited me to go along. 

Dick was on the aisle, then Liz, and finally me. As we were watching this dramatic movie, Dick dozed off with his head rolling back, and began to snore. Liz and I had a few quiet giggles, and she gave him a light elbow to the ribs to wake him up. It is a bit difficult to keep up with a movie when someone is snoring, after all. After a few minutes, the symphony of snores resumed, and again, Liz nudged her husband to wake him up. This cycle repeated a few times, but Liz finally got sick and tired of trying to keep him awake. When I told her to nudge him, she refused, telling me that she just wasn't going to try any more. So I struggled to understand the rest of the movie with the extra soundtrack, and life went on.

A few weeks later, I was at Liz and Dick's home when his nephew came over to visit for a bit. They spent a little bit of time catching up on what was going on in the family and how everyone was doing. After a while, Dick asked Brian if he had seen any good movies lately. Brian said, "Well a few weeks ago I went to see The Fisher King. But there was some old man who kept falling asleep and snoring, so I didn't really get much of it. We thought that he was pretty funny, though." Needless to say, Liz and I nearly collapsed from laughing so hard. Brian had gone to the exact same showing of the movie, and had been both frustrated and entertained by the snoring old man that we had been sitting with. Dick expressed that he used to like Brian, and that we two laughing women could just shut up. Well, I will admit that I softened up the language a bit...

Fast forward to about a month before Trent and I got married. We were celebrating my friend Jill's birthday by taking her out to lunch and a movie. A scary movie, so Jill was nervous before it even began. I was sitting between the two during the movie, trying to keep my girlie-scared friend from losing it completely. And then it happened. Trent began to softly snore. I nudged him a bit and he roused up, only to drift off again. In his defense, the movie wasn't all that great. After one of the times that I gently poked him, he crankily asked why I did that. I told him, "You fell asleep. You were snoring." Using a logic that can only be called upon when you're not really awake, he said loudly, "I paid good money to sleep through this movie!" The theater erupted in laughter, and I gave up on trying to keep him from sleeping. Of course, as soon as I gave up the fight, he stayed awake. But he still thought the movie was boring and stupid.

And how does Avatar fit into all of this? When the movie came out, Liz and Dick took us to see it in 3D on Christmas Day. I don't know about you, but on special days like Christmas, I feel like being kind to my fellow humans and other critters. I want to be happy and want them to be happy. But before I knew it, an altercation had started. Apparently an almost-teenage boy had accidentally cut in line in front of us, and Dick started yelling at him. Within moments, the kid's father and Dick were about to exchange blows. Seriously, they were toe-to-toe with their chests puffed out, and inviting each other to throw the first punch either in the lobby or the parking lot. Both Liz and the kid's mom were upset and embarrassed, and apologized to each other after convincing the men not to fight.

Unfortunately, for both Liz and me, the damage had been done. I was literally shaking, and almost in tears. That's what sometimes happens when you have PTSD and a history of abuse. How was I to sit calmly through a long movie when I could barely breathe? Liz was also shaken, and took a Xanax, offering me one as well. I accepted because I knew I was on the verge of falling apart. About three-quarters of the way through the movie, Trent said something about me sleeping through it, and I dismissed it as smart-aleckiness. Months later, when we watched the DVD at home, I said that I didn't remember some of the things that had happened in the movie. "I told you that you slept through part of it," Trent said, "Now do you believe me?" I couldn't argue with him, he was obviously right. I guess we all have our movie moments.