Going to the Movies

Some things that seem quite trivial on the surface stick with you over time, like those little burrs from wild carrots that embed themselves into the hems of your clothes and persist to annoy you at unexpected moments weeks or even months later. Sooner or later, you sit down and pick that damned seedpod out of the threads of the fabric and think to yourself, how did this tiny thing survive five trips through the laundry?  So you get out a magnifying glass or a microscope and take a closer look to see what made it stick so well.

This memory is a burr.

When I was a child, the only way to see a movie was to go to a theater. We didn’t go often because money was always tight, or at least Mom said it was whenever we asked for anything. Usually we got to go see the animated Disney features when they came to the local theater though. Mom had promised to take us to see Aristocats, and we were crazy excited. We’d seen the trailer and memorized the “We are Siamese” song, which we sang loudly, bouncing in the back seat of the Torino, as we headed to the theater for the matinee.

Of course we were running late. We were always running late. It is a constant of all of my memories, this lateness. I have no doubt that Mom was late to her own birth and will be late to her own funeral. The poor organist will keel over from exhaustion waiting for her.

Anyway, there we were, in the car, our excitement chilling as Mom got more stressed and angry, checking her watch and muttering to herself. Finally we pulled into the theater parking lot, a good quarter hour past the start of the matinee.

“Well, what do you want to do?” Mom asked, turning back to look at us. “Should we stay for the more expensive show later, or go home?”

Kit and I knew damned well that this was a trap. We’d sprung a thousand such before. We stared at each other with apprehension, our eyes speaking paragraphs. Ask Mom, who was always pinching pennies, to spend more money? Risky move. Ask her to go back home after she swore and swerved through Dallas Saturday traffic to get here? Probably dangerous. Sit there forever and say nothing? Tempting, but unfortunately not an option.

“Let’s go home,” Kit said.

Mom started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. She was furious. Every angle of her body and the grip of her hands on the steering wheel was angry. On the way home, she berated us for wasting her time, making her drive all that way for nothing. We cringed in the back seat as the waves of her rage washed over us, saying nothing, our stomachs tight with anxiety, not daring to look at each other lest we burst into tears. Once again, we had failed the test. We always failed. We tried so hard, but somehow it never worked.