Adorkable Musings

I have always been a movie person.  I love being in the theater, eating the popcorn or nachos, and seeing the movie trailers.  If I am very excited about a movie, I’m the person who is there on Thursday night so I can be among the first to see it.  If I like a movie enough, I will return to see it.  There are moments in my life that happened at a movie theater that will always make it magical. It’s easier for me to focus on a movie in a theater than it is for me to focus on it at home. 

In a previous post, I mentioned that movies help my active imagination.  That is an easy escape.  Where did this start?  Back home in Chicago.  Looking back, the nineties were a magical time.  We didn’t have a lot of technology on us, so we used what we had.  I can still remember looking in the newspaper for the movie times and looking at different theaters to see which option was better.  Then there was Moviefone.  It was a number we could call that would give us movie times and theater locations.  We thought that was big stuff.  I remember going to so many movies that I collected the stubs.  It’s like how some people keep concert stubs.  I still remember the first stub I collected, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Once we found the movie we wanted at the time and the theater we wanted, we were on our way.  My parents would take my brother and me to the theater and give us cash for the tickets.  Hopefully, it was too crowded, because my parents would want to know when the movie ended.  So, they could pick us up.  As we got older and made friends, we would get dropped off at the mall and walk to the theater.  Once we were done, we would find a payphone to call our parents to collect.  There was a trick to this, though.  When you called collect, they would ask you to state your name so the person on the other end would know who was calling.  When prompted, we would say, “The movie is over.  Can you pick us up?”.   Then, we would wait in front of the theater with other teens and kids.

My best moment was being in a theater where an excellent movie was playing.  If the soundtrack was really good, you might have people dancing.  Fights would get people oohing and ahhing.  If the jokes were funny, people would be on the floor laughing.  I remember going to see Ladybugs (1992). The theater was so caught up in the big game at the end that one moviegoer jumped up and cheered.  She quickly realized she was at the movies, not the soccer field.  We laughed and went back to the film. No harm, no foul. 

When the pandemic started, being in a theater was one of the main things I missed.  Many of my friends said they preferred to watch movies at home.  It caused me to remember that the reasons I listed for why I love going to the movies, some people will hate going for the same reasons.  My social anxiety also made it very hard for me to go.  I am glad that I can go and enjoy myself.  Going to the movies by myself was the first thing I did to try to curb my anxiety. So far, it has been a good experiment.