My Tuesday babysitter arrived as usual around 4:25. I planned to use a Target gift card to purchase blooming spring tulips & hyacinths as well as to leisurely shop for necessities like laundry detergent, pencils, a toilet seat, etc. etc.
I've been posting about my struggles with the winter blahs, though my insipid dealings with depression embarrass me on some levels. However, I continue to include them because depression is often a side-effect of chronic illness as well as of caring for a person with special needs.
With that said, one element of both depression and arthritis is brain fog and the accompanying inability to follow a thought or task through to completion. With cotton filling my cranium I grabbed some cash and my cell phone and drove to Joplin. Forty minutes later while zooming down Seventh Street I realized I had forgotten my checkbook (courtesy of cotton) which contained my Target gift card, credit cards, driver's license--everything a girl needs to enjoy a truly tranquil Tuesday. Blimey! After scrounging through the Tahoe and my pockets I accumulated a total of twenty dollars.
Now what?
I really wanted those spring bulbs, so I shopped at Target first. After limping around the store for twenty minutes, I finally asked a red-shirted Target employee where to find the bulbs. Answer: they don't have them yet. I was beginning to think the gods were conspiring against me.
Plan C: The dreaded Wal-mart. I used to love the one-stop shopping benefits of Wal-mart, but as my mobility has decreased I've begun viewing a trip through that particular store as the equivalent of running an indoor marathon. By the time I've finished I need plenty of fluids and a complete day of rest. This trip was worth it, though. Because I only had twenty dollars, I wasn't my usual marketer's-dream-self, grabbing something from every other end cap. I found the bulbs, purchased a fragrant purple hyacinth and a budding yellow tulip for $10 plus tax and left the store within twenty minutes: a personal record in both time and money.
Fewer than ten dollars remained at only 6:45. I didn't bring a book and didn't want to spend my pittance on one. Maybe a movie? I discover that The Golden Compass was playing at the second-run theatre at 7:15 AND Tuesdays offered 50-cent-movies! Score! I recently read the His Dark Materials series (The Golden Compass is book one of three) when the movie's release caused so much hype from the Christian right, a group of which I consider myself a member, but not a mindless-sheep-type member. I've been looking forward to seeing the movie and the right-wing-Christian part of me relished viewing it without financially supporting it.
I spent fifty cents on my ticket, then scrounged to come up with the $8.62 needed for a small popcorn and bottle of water. I wondered how they profited when they only charged 50 cents for a movie??? (eye-rolling here). I balanced the water, popcorn and ticket on my left side while I managed my cane with my right, handed off the ticket to a frazzled, overweight ticket-taker and moved slowly to my theatre. Based on the loud entryway overcrowded with high-school-aged kids yelling things such as douche-bag and like-like-you-know-like, I wasn't the only one looking for a cheap viewing on the big screen. I was just the oldest one. I hoped they'd all purchased tickets for Beowulf or Thirty Days of Night.
Wrong. The theatre was packed! Rather than hobble around with my cane and risk spilling my popcorn, I chose the back corner seat nearest the door, a door I closed myself after it remained open during the first two scenes, allowing raucous, profane sounds to interrupt the movie. Before the movie began, I turned off my phone, opened my water and settled in to enjoy an uninterrupted movie.
In my dreams. A man seated in the front of the theatre evidently suffered from some condition because intermittently through the beginning half of the movie he would whoop! whoop! whoop! at the top of his voice like some kind of self-setting alarm. He later escalated to running up the aisle and out the door while another man (his dad?) followed him. For me that looked like this: man runs up aisle, second man follows, door opens letting in loudness and light, door closes, momentary peace, door opens letting in loudness and light, man runs back down aisle followed by ever-tiring second man, both seat themselves, momentary peace. Repeat.
Oh, but it gets better. At a very-quiet-climax of the movie another movie in the cineplex finished, letting out another pack of vociferous adolescents. I could only surmise that this particular group of teen-agers was working up the courage to sneak into a second movie without paying (I don't know why I thought teen-agers might do such a thing...of course I never tried such a thing in my youth). They opened the door (bright light bright light! -- I was beginning to feel like a Gremlin), one exclaimed, "Dude! It's packed!" shut the door, and they all remained just outside the door talking loudly and pushing each other into the door. Over. And over. And over. I contemplated asking them to please be quiet, but felt certain that my limping, cane-toting demeanor would only inspire ridicule and more noise.
At this point, the aforementioned man from the front jumped from his seat, held his palms tightly against his ears with his elbows pointed straight out from his head and ran up the aisle screaming, "It's bad! It's bad! It's bad!" I couldn't agree more.
Finally, five minutes before the movie concluded a man sitting further down my aisle rose amidst his wife/girlfriend's, no-dont's to address the unruly crowd outside the door. I thanked him out loud as he squoze in front of me. Whatever he said or did worked because we in the last four rows were able to watch the conclusion in peace.
I arrived home at 10:00 to find Hannah still awake and out of bed.
I just had to laugh. It was that or go crazy...hey...maybe that's not such a bad idea either.
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