Movie Mayhem

I went with one of my older brothers last year to see the latest Batman movie. I really enjoyed the movie, but I especially enjoyed sitting next to my insane older brother. The anonymity granted by the pitch black theater allowed me to finally see some of his antics without the stigma of relation weighing me down. And I have to admit, it was fun to watch.

He broke just about every rule of movie theater etiquette I’ve ever known. The only one missing was the crying baby. He answered his cell phone (“No, I’m in a movie. Hang on; I can’t hear you over these idiots shushing me.”) He responded with his take on every preview (“Pass! I’ll pass on that one!”) And he answered questions that characters posed in the film with lame answers (“Why so serious? Because you scare me!”) He even made shadow puppets on the screen during the opening credits. He was quite the disaster. But I sat two seats away “to give us some extra room,” so he just looked like the loser who came to the movie by himself. It was really enjoyable to see other people hate him so quickly without my usual guilt-by-association.

But there was one thing that just befuddled me. (I was gonna say confused, but my thesaurus helped me there.) He put his jacket on his seat and went during the last preview and got the largest size of popcorn he could buy. You know, the one that is roughly the size of an oil drum. He offered to share with me, but I didn’t want anyone realizing we were there together. I really wanted to continue the illusion of disassociation, but I also really wanted some buttery goodness. So I told him to eat what he wanted, and I’d take the rest of the bag when he finished. And to my great astonishment, he handed me a half-empty bag within 3 minutes of my suggestion. For a wild moment, I thought he had silently eaten 4 pounds of popcorn without me noticing. But I realized that instead of scarfing it down, he had zipped his jacket halfway up and filled the space between the jacket and shirt with popcorn. That’s right, he poured half a bag of hot, buttered popcorn directly on his shirt and under his jacket.

So I sat dumbfounded for a few minutes while trying to ignore the “I-can’t-believe-I-thought-of-this-wonderful-idea” look on his face. He kept finding little pieces of popcorn on his shirt throughout the movie, and he got excited every time. It was very entertaining. On the way out I walked about 10 paces behind him because of the enormous, greasy butter stain on the left side of his torso. It was really fun watching all the other moviegoers staring at him and wondering how he did that. It was worth the price of admission.