Jerk

I love going to the movies: the popcorn, soda, dimming lights, fantasy, it’s everything I want. My mother, on the other hand, can barely stand it when I drag her off to the silver screen, but once or twice a year some movie will come out that she must simply see.

I’m often surprised, or amused, at the titles she picks. I forget all of the conversation that took place, but she suggested we go to see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. I think we even saw it on the opening weekend.

So there we were, watching those cheap pre-trailer trailer/commercials, one of the first parties to enter the auditorium. About the five-hundredth time the anthropomorphic red M&M counseled us to silence our cell phones, a young high school or college age kid sat in our row a good ways away from us. However, the distance did little to muffle the lad.

In a boisterous manner he made us privy to his acumen as an explosive Michael Bay trailer played. Not the slightest joke passed him without a hearty guffaw. We prayed between ourselves that at the trailers’ end, and when all good men know their lips must be stilled, the boy would render silence. Promptly he disabused us of our faulty hopes, and thus the silence rent.

I proposed a change of scene, perhaps a few rows away from here, and as inconspicuously as possible we forged a path to quieter seating. Here we had to walk in front of the rowdy child, and here my memory seems to record—I was not sure then, nor am I now, if I really heard it—that he disapproved of us, muttering the word, jerks.

The change was good, and though we still could hear his laugh, we were spared further sampling of what he may have deemed insightful commentary.