Robin Writes: Elbow room
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By Robin Garrison Leach
I’m friendly in the ticket line. I weave through the cattle guards with a docile gait and a generic smile on my face. We’re all God’s children, after all. And we all just want to see a movie.
I watch clumps of humanity with similar facial features belly up to the window and mumble self-consciously into the round speaker hole in the window: “Four for Aquaman.” “Six for Wonka.” Family time. Sweet.
Couples fidget and jitter along the line as if propelled by static electricity. Giggle. Whisper. They choose a movie in mumbled agreement and amble away, Velcro-ed together and gooey-happy.
Our turn. I get tickets for my daughter and me. I smile. The boy inside the lobby takes our tickets and rips them apart. We’re in.
Another line ribbons ahead at the concession stand. Kings’ ransoms are relinquished in exchange for puny cups and cardboard tubs. I wait my turn, order my stuff, and weave my way through the throng and toward my movie.
The room isn’t dark yet; we’re early. I survey the space, point to a spot about halfway up, and we start climbing. We sit, leaving an empty space between us. We’re clever. Now we’ll have room to spread out.
I slide my Diet Coke into the cup holder on the seat’s arm, plop down…and the transformation begins.
I can feel it happening, but I am powerless to control it. Movie seats trigger a change in my brain waves. I am no longer part of the Family of Man. Hostility seeps from my pores like skunk fumes.
The sweet old woman who smiled her way through the lobby has become a seething misanthrope in the dim shadows of theater seating.
I lean back, extend my arms like Stretch Armstrong, and stake my claim to this area, daring any fool to sit within 10 seats of me—in any direction.
My face contorts and darkens; an alien hides within my chest, waiting to burst out in bloody vigor, strangling anybody who nears my row.
I mutter disgustedly as each body lumbers into the theater. “Look at him,” I hiss to my daughter/familiar. “I just KNOW he’s gonna come up here.” I train my evil thoughts his direction, willing him to stop climbing.
Whew. He’s winded by row four. I’m safe.
Other feet slap stickily along the aisles and stairs of the auditorium. They approach my space like scrambling spiders descending on dinner. I spread my body out, inflating my girth like the throat of a courting bullfrog.
“Oh, no!” I jab Andrea’s side. She is alert and frantic, hoping to enjoy the movie and knowing how difficult that will be if anybody sits close. “Look. A gaggle of women. They’re yakking and coming this way.”
It’s almost show time. The lights start to dim. I pray for stumbling. Charley horses. Failing eyesight and flaccid calf muscles. They MUST NOT reach our row. Andrea frog-inflates with me.
We are a seated RED ROVER line, and nobody is welcome to COME RIGHT OVER.
Multiple shadows pass. The mass of popcorn chewers climbs to the top and I start to relax. The movie is starting and no heads or voices or elbows are nearby. I can see perfectly.
Andrea shrinks back to fit into her seat, and music lilts over my exhausted senses. The title looms on the screen and I remember what we came to see.
“Oh, yeah. It’s a love story…” I whisper to nobody around me. “I love cozy romances…” Andrea chokes on a dollar’s worth of soda.
• Robin is a freelance columnist who lives and writes in Quincy, Illinois. Contact her at [email protected].
