Don’t you just love it when you “find” extra time? My absolute very favorite day of the year isn’t Christmas or Halloween or my birthday……it’s the day we celebrate Daylight Saving’s time! Getting that extra hour is such an indulgent treat. As is the case with most busy mom’s, my fantasies revolve around exciting notions like having more hours in the day (oh, and a live in housekeeper and an unlimited budget for nonsense would be good too).
Today I was lucky enough to “find” some time with Amanda. She is missing an overnight with her 8th grade class to one of those outdoor education deals because she has her State Gymnastics Meet during the day tomorrow. It is a family tradition, going back several generations, to celebrate “found” time by going to the movies (100 years ago I am sure my relatives were sneaking away from their jobs to watch silent movies with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Charlie Chaplin)! With little else appropriate for the eyes of an impressionable teenager, we selected Our Family Wedding. Young love, how sweet. What could be so wrong? This is by far one of the worst and dumbest movies ever made (and I liked Ishtar). I love Forest Whitaker. He was awesome in Good Morning Vietnam and he did just win an Academy Award last year, so I expected something better. I must wonder just how much money they were paying him to make such a stinker. Amanda and I were bemoaning the fact that the movie was pretty bad, but we were holding out for improvement. After we endured about 80 minutes of ridiculous clichés and images flickering across the screen, my daughter turned to me and said, “Do you want to just go?” So we packed up our belongings and darted out of the theater.
I was really very irritated. I mean here I was with my daughter, on our day with “found” time, and we squandered it by putting our trust in the studio system to provide us with entertainment. Ha! I told my gal pal that before we left I had to get our money back. The young lady at the counter was quite accommodating when I explained that we had lost an hour and twenty minutes of our lives to this awful movie that we would never be able to get back. Horrified, Amanda turned away and whispered to me, “You’re so weird.” And to add insult to injury the popcorn was stale (even after I drizzled butter on it, which everyone knows should make it tastier). They refunded me the $6.50 for the popcorn too (and they didn’t even bat an eye that we had managed to eat a third of it because we were too lazy to make the long walk back to the concession counter). I must say that I am favorably impressed with the fantastic customer service at the CineMark Theater, which is way more than I can say for Forest Whitaker today.
The best part about salvaging our afternoon was that we had time to take a quick hot lap around Target, where they never disappoint. Stay tuned………………
More is More Mom 