Movie Theater First-Timer

Cold, rainy, dreary day=perfect weather for the movie theater.

I had gone out to run some errands this morning in the freezing cold rain, and when I was on my way home I had a thought. We should go see a movie today…at the movie theater. But wait, we’ve never taken Noah to the movie theater. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time Nick and I went to see a movie. I pushed the idea aside as I remembered exactly how much work I needed to get done today. Pulled into the driveway. Went inside. I mentioned the idea to Nick not thinking he would actually go for it, but much to my surprise, the next thing I knew he was looking up movie times on the internet. He listed off a few that sounded great for us but not for Noah. The only thing that was rated G was The Princess and the Frog which we decided would be our best bet. And besides, it looked like it would be cute. So, we ate our lunch, got bundled up, I grabbed our camera (thought we should document Noah’s first time at the movie theater), and off we went.

We figured the theater would be basically empty since we were seeing a showing at 12:35, and we were right. We walked up to the box office to purchase our tickets when the ticket lady said it would be $20.50. I thought to myself, “Man, that’s really expensive, especially for a matinee.” I glanced at the sign and told her that Noah is only 2. She looked back at her manager like “what should I do?” and he mumbled something back to her. They seemed like they didn’t believe me or something. My mind began thinking of how I could prove to them that he’s only 2, and then I quickly told them that I would be happy to use the extra $6.50 at the concession stand, but she offered to just go ahead and give me the cash back. She gave us our tickets and we went inside.

We purposely got there early because Nick said he wanted Noah to have the full movie theater experience and have some time to play in the arcade. So, we ventured into the dark room and the boys tried out all the driving games.

I spotted the photo booth which immediately brought me back to my teenage years. I thought, “How fun would it be for us to have these pictures from Noah’s first time at the movie theater?!” We piled into the tiny booth, pulled the black curtain shut, and tried to figure out this modern version of the photo booth. I don’t remember these things being this complicated. It had like 5 different categories to choose from. Do you want the picture to be in color, sepia, or black and white? What kind of theme do you want? There were more that I can’t remember. Then, to top it off we could only choose the very first thing on the list because the buttons were broken! So we’re preparing to take our first picture out of 4 and we notice that our faces are not on the screen…because the camera is pointing way up high! We quickly half-way stand up all the while trying to get our faces in the frame while it shoots the pictures! Good times. We paid $3 for 2 strips of priceless pictures that say “Season’s Greetings” at the top. I’ll always remember our session in the photo booth.

We still had some time to kill, so I suggested we try the “try and position the claw just right so you can win a hideous stuffed animal” game or something like that. Nick put 50 cents in the machine and worked his magic! I don’t know about any of you, but I have never been able to win anything out of those. Well, wouldn’t you know! God was smiling on Noah’s first visit to the movie theater because we got a funny little panda bear with huge eyes!

Now it was time for us to get our popcorn and a drink and head into the theater. For awhile we were the only ones in there, but a couple of kids with their parents came in a little later. Nothing real exciting to report about the actual watching of a movie because Noah did great! He enjoyed the movie and sat through the whole thing. He was, of course, not excited when the movie was over and we told him it was time to leave. The Princess and the Frog was a cute movie, by the way. And, Noah is officially no longer a movie theater first-timer.