Friday, April 16, 2010

6 Impossible Things Before Breakfast

I tried to take my grandmother to see "Alice in Wonderland" 3D on Tuesday. After scouring the parking lot for the closest possible parking spot, buying the tickets and redeeming my voucher for free popcorn we discovered we'd been duped into seeing the regular version. Much hullaballoo ensued as I tried to edit undo these transactions with the net result of a $0.77 deficit to my bank account and an agreement to try again at a different theater today as I had dinner plans Tuesday and couldn't stay in the city until the next showing.

So this morning I woke up early and Grandma and I hit the backroad highways back to the city for the second time this week. She told me stories from her childhood, and we swapped road trip tales and she showed me where my father works. After a quick stop for her doctor's appointment we had a half hour to kill so we bought fruit smoothies and gave ourselves freezy headaches.

Grandma had told me she hadn't been to a movie in a theater since before she was married. Last time she went it was $0.75 each to get in. That's right, less than the amount I lost on the extra butter for my free popcorn on Tuesday.

I could hear her laughing a lot throughout the movie and when it was over she said, "Well, that's not the Alice in Wonderland I remember," which made me laugh. I asked her if she enjoyed it and was so happy myself when she grinned from ear to ear and said with shiny eyes, "Oh yes, very much." I grinned right back.

On the way home we lamented the loss of drive-ins and the general ineptitude of my generation. I know I ought to have defended us but frankly I had to agree we are, on the whole, indefensibly useless creatures. I do hope to do better with that myself, starting with learning how to patch my bike tire tube this weekend.

Daily Dose of Plautdietsch: schrickt = scream

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