March 2004 Issue - Essay # 1
Sit
Tight...
By Kristin
Dreyer Kramer
Back
in the days when movies lasted no longer than ninety minutes, it
wasn’t so noticeable. But when you walk into the movie theater today,
you never know when you’ll get out. It could be days. I’ve started
packing an overnight bag and taking it along to the theater--just in
case. So,
after you pay your $82 for admission, a medium soda, and a four-ounce
package of stale Junior Mints, you find your theater and search for The
Perfect Seat. It has to be the right distance from the screen, you
decide, and relatively free from the crowd (who could block the view of
the screen or make too much noise). You pick a seat and settle in,
making yourself as comfortable as possible. At
first, it’s fine. Maybe you’ve got one of those fancy rocking seats--and there’s no one behind you, kicking your seat every time you
lean back. But then, about an hour into the movie, you start to squirm.
Parts of your legs have begun to go numb. Your back aches. You shift
from one side to another. You cross your legs. You uncross your legs.
You put your legs up on the seat ahead of you, hoping you won’t be
caught and scolded by the pubescent theater worker with a flashlight. It’s
even worse if you’re tall--like I am. You either have to put your
knees up on the seat ahead of you (thereby getting crushed each time the
person in front of you makes use of the fancy rocking-chair action) or
sit sideways and put your legs up on the seat next to you. Usually, you
just end up trying to cross and uncross your legs without kicking the
person in front of you in the head. It’s quite a challenge. By
the time the movie comes to its exciting climax, you’re no longer
paying attention to the movie. Not only is your lease on that $15 soda
up, but you’re so uncomfortable in your seat that you’ve lost track
of the story. So you start keeping an eye on your watch. It’s got to
be over soon, you think. I’m
starting to think that this is all just part of an elaborate Hollywood
plot. Maybe the movies are so bad that they don’t want you to pay
attention. So they make the movies extra-long and the theater seats
extra-uncomfortable. Then they encourage you to drink tubs of soda. When
the movie is finally over, you want nothing more than to get up and skip
out of the theater--but it’s not that easy. The muscles in your
backside have gone on strike. They’re stubbornly frozen in place,
making it impossible to walk in a normal manner. You find yourself
unable to bend your legs at all, so you end up doing an awkward-looking
shuffle--your butt thrust out, you walk in short pivots instead of
steps. Fortunately, everyone else is walking that way, too, so you’re
not alone--you all look like the Children of Frankenstein. Recently,
however, I thought that my search for the acceptable theater seat was
over when a friend suggested going to a movie. “We can go to the new
theater,” she said. “The seats mold to your butt,” she added
reverently. Now this I had to see, er, feel. The
two of us were early for the show--so we could have extra time to
find our way to our seats, since we assumed that the theater was most
likely huge and maze-like. And, I noted as we walked in, expensive. The
cavernous lobby with its fancy lighting told us that we’d be shelling
out more-outrageous-than-usual ticket prices. We
made our way through the lines of other curious movie-goers and finally
found our way to the right theater. The excitement mounted as we chose
our seats. We giggled and sat down. Slowly,
I sank into my seat. It felt--weird. I giggled again as I shifted in
my seat. I poked at it. I made handprints in the seat next to me. I was
thoroughly entertained, and the movie hadn’t even started! The
seats were made of the same sandy foam-like stuff that’s in those
soft, squishy objects (in the shape of golf balls or you boss’s head)
that you squeeze (supposedly to relieve stress). When you let go, they
slowly go back to their original form (which is good for the seats--because who wants to sit down in someone else’s butt print?). It
all seemed like a great idea, but could it stand up to the 150-minute
comfort test? It
started out great. If my butt wasn’t comfortable, it was at least
entertained, and that kept it happy. But, I’m afraid to report, the novelty of it all didn’t last long. Before long, I was
shifting uncomfortably in my seat, trying not to kick the kid in front
of me in the head. I checked my watch--to discover that the movie
was far from over. Then I shifted again. The seat may have molded to my
butt, but it was, in no way, soft and cushy. It was like sitting in a
tiny box of potting soil. By
the time it was all over, I remembered very little about the movie. If I
recall correctly, I thought that I liked it. Once the movie was over, it was time to get out of my seat. But I wasn’t sure if I could. What if my seat had molded to my butt and had actually began to swallow it? I’d never get out... Slowly,
I pulled myself out of my seat. My muscles groaned as though I’d just
woken them from a long winter’s nap. I
turned around for a minute to study the butt-print in the seat. I
giggled. Then I waddled out of the theater and to the parking lot with
the rest of Frankenstein’s children. Previously
published at
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Author's Biography Kristin Dreyer Kramer is the editor-in-chief of NightsAndWeekends.com--as well as a new resident of the fine state of Massachusetts (which she can finally spell without having to look it up). She's
been published in all four corners of the Internet (assuming that the
Internet does, in fact, have corners) as well as in print.
Someday, she plans to put her random silly articles together into
a book, which her mother and a few friends have politely promised to
purchase. Kristin welcomes fan mail, generous donations, and book deals at kdk@nightsandweekends.com.
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Essay
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