Drive-in

I went to my first drive-in movie over the weekend. (I may have gone to some when I was a baby, but this is the first one I remember.) It was a double feature of a cartoon (Open Season) and a horror movie (The Grudge). There were two teenagers who were parked next to us, and half-way through the cartoon, their passenger-side door opened. The boy stepped out to "adjust" his pants. Conveniently for him, they were elastic-waistband sweatpants. The dome-light illuminated the girl in the driver's seat, buttoning up her shirt. I imagined the boy picking out those particular pants before the movie and thought how bloody presumptuous young men tend to be.

Appalled (and secretly amused), I scowled like an old person who'd never in my life "made out" and whose son (who was sitting next to me) had been dropped off by the stork. "Pass me those funnel cakes," I said to my husband. I was so unsettled that I even scowled at the funnel cakes. "Fried bread with sugar on top...what could be better for me than that?" We, good parents that we are, left when the cartoon was over.


As a perfunctory aside, the bathrooms at this place were CLEAN. Like immaculately clean. So clean it was weird. I'm kind of finicky about public restrooms. And the man who gave me my funnel cakes told me, as he told everyone, "Enjoy the show!" like he really meant it. I liked him for that, and I liked his clean bathrooms and his fried bread with sugar on top. And I liked being a responsible parent and leaving after the cartoon was over. And I even liked those irreverant teenagers who made me feel so old.