good monster. bad monster.

We did dinner and a movie last night. It was the opening night of Harry Potter - Order of the Phoenix and Monster was dying to see it on the opening day. He'd already bought our tickets online and couldn't wait to get to the theatre. The movie started at 7:05 p.m. and we got to the theatre at 5:00. We picked up the tickets first before getting something to eat next door. He had the cheese ravioli. I had the tilapia salad special, which was great with a very bitey fresh garlic ranch dressing. While I enjoyed a very good glass of Sterling Merlot after dinner, he went inside the cinema to see if they were seating yet. He phoned me from inside the theatre to let me know he was already in the theatre, saving our seats.

To his credit, Monster paid for both dinner and the movie tickets.

Unfortunately, Harry Potter was showing in theatre 3. That's the mildew room. Two years after a nasty leak was fixed, the smell of mold still kinda knocks me back when I step inside - usually giving me a headache and/or sore throat. I meandered around the lobby for a while before sitting down in time for Monster to empty his bladder before the movie.

About half an hour before the movie, a woman sat down beside Monster with one of her sons, while waiting for the other one to come in from the concession stand. There were only two seats empty beside Monster. There was one seat empty in front of him and there was a seat beside me empty. She asked very politely if we could scoot down one seat to let her other son sit next to them. I was instantly saying "okay" and Monster strongly stated that No, he would not move down a seat and he had been waiting too long to see this movie to move for anyone. Once the movie was ready to start, she took the seat in front of Monster, and He was angry at Her for obstructing his view. After the movie, on the way home, I mentioned that it wouldn't have hurt a thing for him to move down one spot so they could all sit together. He got angry with me then, saying "Well, I guess I'm just a bad person!" and so on.
Maybe this was his way of expressing stress over moving this week but that's no excuse for being an asshole to other patrons, in my opinion.

Not leaving well-enough alone, I had to point out that he was behaving just like his best friend - a guy who will refuse to move his car a few feet forward at fast food take-out windows and who will complain when the free internet service is down at cafes where he's not even buying a cup of coffee.

All of us feel irritable and out of control sometimes and that's when the least we can do is try to be polite to eachother, especially when it costs us nothing to do so. And we all need to remember that none of us are especially entitled to anything from the universe.