An aging youth minister goes to the movies

Years ago, when I was in a movie theater, waiting in anticipation of not thinking about myself for 2 whole hours and immersing myself in someone else’s problem so I could leave thinking my life is really not that bad, I wouldn’t mind when a huge group of middle school kids walked in laughing and sat right behind me after doing the trying-to-sit-by-the-right-person-accidentally-on-purpose-dance in the aisle. I would shake my head when they put their feet on the back of my chair, I would smirk at other adults when they answered their phones after the lights went down, and I would debate to myself whether or not to warn them when an angry man would leave the theater to go tell management on them. They were just misunderstood and drunk on the free hours out from under their mother’s eye. Maybe they secretly met up with the hottest guy at Lincoln Middle after changing into the cutest long-sleeved midriff sweater from Abercrombie in the bathroom at the theater after making their dad drop them off outside Sears so no one would see them. Maybe they are test-driving a flatiron and mascara for the first time tonight or the final loss of the babyfat. I delighted to watch these giggling, hormonal, indestructible, fearless little heartbeats who hadn’t been denied or truly wounded yet. It was really funny to me, and oddly comforting knowing that I was superior to all the other adults in the theater because I knew how to communicate with a 13-year-old mass of hormones, that I understood their world, their language, their music, and all the other grown-ups had fallen out of good will with that fountain of all coolness – youth culture.
Tonight when 8 middle school children walked into the lush new dinner IMAX theater, with over-priced dinners, tickets, and leather chairs, specifically designed to ostracize those attending movies on babysitting money and allowances, my attitude fell several degrees. For I, too, had just shelled out $25 for a ticket, a chicken sandwich and a Coke, hoping for some peace and quiet and a little entertainment. I did not think front row seats to the Back to School drama production “Britney and Brody go to the movies” was worth $25. But, I sat there seething and glaring at them in the dark as they colored their names, schools, grad year and smiley faces onto the counter with a bouquet of Sharpies attached to a key chain, while they chatted and texted their friends who were grounded, while they obviously ignored the 4 boys sprawled across 8 seats, who were ignoring the girls right back but talking loudly enough to be heard by all, who were holding their pants up with one hand and flipping their cool surfer-dude hair out of their eyes. I didn’t tell the manager because that would seem like a betrayal since I love teenagers… right?
Maybe we all just reach an age where it is just too much work to be young and cool. We wear what we have to, what we can afford, what the office dictates; we go to bed as soon as we can; we learn words like FICA and “diversify”, and we suddenly become sincerely interested in whatever product cleans our kitchen the fastest. We are still a little surprised that who we expect to see in the mirror no longer looks out at us, and what was once beautiful or handsome has faded into common, shades of gray. At some point the veil of years and experience clouds the person we all think we really are and we feel that we are globally deeply misunderstood – it is perhaps only then that we realize what we truly lost. Maybe that is why we are so annoyed by teenagers, because they remind us of what we have lost. For I too was once kicked out of theaters.