Would you please SHUT UP!

I love going to the movies. I might even call myself a movie buff. And going to the movie theater to see a high-action blockbuster, a smoky romance, or a laugh-out-loud comedy is one of my favorite things to do. At least it used to be.

Very few things bother me more than noisy, inconsiderate people at the movies. Sometimes, I can go to the movies and block out the sounds of other people talking - to their dates OR on their cell phones. Other times, like this past weekend, I just can't seem to get past the rudeness of stupid people.

Mark and I decided to go The Break-Up on Saturday afternoon. I am a big fan of Jennifer Aniston, and Mark really enjoys the crazy antics of Vince Vaughn. So, after some running around and errands, we headed over to Southdale Mall to take in a 1:30 show.

When we arrived at the theater about 20 minutes early, the place was pretty empty. As the show time grew nearer, however, the place filled to almost capacity. My anxiety was heightened as people settled in on either side of Mark and I, as well as directly in front of and behind us. We were surrounded by potentially rude people.

Now, let me digress for a brief moment. I'm not certain that I've ever explained to my millions of readers the experiences that Mark and I have endured at the movies. We tend to be surrounded by people who fail to remember that they are not in their own living room at home, but they are in fact in a public place where others have paid hard-earned money to relax for a night at the movies. There was Love Actually, where a woman screamed, clapped, and blew kisses at the screen every time Hugh Grant made an appearance. She also decided that a smelly, disgusting bologna sandwich was an appropriate thing to bring to the movies and eat during the film. And then there was Layercake, where a group of elderly women decided to sit directly next to and behind Mark and I, and proceeded to chat during the entire film, eventually leaving halfway through because, as I gathered from the conversation they were having, they had lost one member of the group! And who can forget The Chronicles of Narnia? We went to this movie on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. The theater was empty except for a very well-behaved family of five, sitting about six rows back from us, and that nice loud couple who decided it was appropriate to sit in the row DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF US and talk on their CELL PHONES during the ENTIRE MOVIE. And the list goes on and on.

Yes, we've had a fair amount of movie frustrations.

We’ve tried different ways to alleviate these problems. We’ve gone different times of day – afternoon, evening, late night. We’ve tried different theaters – downtown Minneapolis, suburbs, Saint Paul. Nothing helps. Rude and stupid people are everywhere.

So, you can see where my anxiety would come in as the walls of people started to close in around us on this particular Saturday afternoon. I had pegged the three chatty women in front of us for the problem group. Little did I know that it would be the loud, chauvinistic, offensive, brute of a wanna-be-frat-boy and his short, high-pitched, I'm-so-in-love-with-my-mush-for-a-brain boyfriend that would be our biggest problem.

As the opening credits rolled, shots appeared of Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn in typical couple fashion - on a bowling team, at a Halloween party, purchasing their new home. During these credits, I got my first glimpse of the problems I'd face during the film. SHE started with the "Those are so cute! It's just like us!" comments, and HE fired back with "We don't take stupid pictures like that. You'd never get me into a dumb costume like that."

I bit my tongue, hoping it'd get better once the movie actually started. I was very, very wrong.

I don't want to get into specifics of the movie for those who want to see it, but there are many typical fighting scenes that you'd see with any couple. And the COUPLE sitting next to me decided to make sure that the entire theater knew that they were in a relationship, and that they’d had those same fights. SHE continuously commented "That's just like you! You do that SAME thing!" And HE'D shoot back, "That's because that's what a MAN does." SHE'D say, "She hurt his feelings, see. Now he's feeling the pain, too." HE'D say, "Real men don't feel pain. They just go out and get laid." It went on like this the entire movie. On more than one occasion, I was completely distracted by this couple, as the theater erupted in laughter over a scene or a line that I had completely missed.

I don’t know what bothered me more, the fact that they were so ridiculously rude and loud and chatty, or that the man in that relationship was such a dick about women in general and yet the girl continued to cuddle up next to him and laugh at his “witty banter” like he was God’s gift. I swear to everything that is holy, if my boyfriend ever said out loud the things that this guy was saying, I’d kick his ass from here to Wednesday. As a movie-goer, I was pissed for myself and others in the vicinity who were disrupted by this couple. As a woman, I was pissed that there still exists young men who feel it’s acceptable to degrade women in the manner that this guy was, and that there still exists women who put up with crap he was spouting.

Now, you might wonder why I didn't lean over and ask them to be quite. Or, why I didn't scream at them at the top of my lungs, rip her annoying little voice box out, and kick this man in the balls with hopes that he'd never procreate. Well, in my experience dealing with different sorts of people, I've found that generally speaking these people enjoy the attention, even the negative attention. I didn't want to start a whole big thing in the theater, and make it more disruptive for other people. Plus, I was afraid that I’d really go off on this guy and I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from telling him to climb back into the shit hole from whence he came.

Looking back, I wish that I would have said something polite. And, in my earlier days, I probably would have said something really nasty to them. But I think that as I've gotten older, I've mellowed out a lot, and I realize that sometimes, people suck and you gotta deal with it. It's either go out into public with the knowledge that sometimes people will piss you off, or become a hermit and never see the light of day.

I'm going to choose the sunlight. But it’s my blog, so I can still bitch and moan about it...