Last night was an exercise in patience. I decided that I would take my kids to the new Mario Bros. movie at the mall. I bought the tickets long before they were home and was a little surprised that movie tickets had gotten that expensive. I decided to pay a little extra to see it in the IMAX theater that also promised lasers. I do have to say the screen didn’t look like an IMAX screen and I don’t know where or when the lasers came in.
One way or another we made it there and during the movie they were all good. It was everything leading up to the movie that was chaos. The first thing we did was eat dinner at McDonald’s which started out ok but as time has gone on McDonald’s has gone from fast food to an exercise in frustration.
While waiting for our order every other person that came in ordered ice cream, and when my kids saw this all they wanted was ice cream. I had to tell them that we couldn’t get ice cream. That we had already ordered our food and it didn’t include ice cream and that the request for ice cream had come in too late.
Having lived in Northern Virginia for most of my life I still allow 30 minutes to get anywhere, no matter how close. So I said we had to be out of the McDonald’s by 5:30 to make it to the theater at 6:00 for a 6:20 showing. What happened instead is we left McDonald’s at 5:30 and were at the mall by 5:40. That’s the issue with highways and no traffic. You get places quickly.
Now at the mall we had more time to kill and that meant the kids wanted to buy things. They were almost able to as the new Five Below had just opened by my daughter rushed ahead into Barnes and Noble and cut off the chance of anything being bought. They still had fun. It was hard keeping them together and I lost each of them at least once in the store, but eventually we made it to the toy section with five minutes before we had to leave for the theater.
They all told me many things they wanted for their birthdays, some of them they might actually get, and then we made it back to the movie theater where we bought concessions which were all dipping dots. Almost $6 for a tiny amount of freezer burnt and stuck together dipping dots. If the future is this dystopian then dipping dots is a good representation.
It was time for the main event. We settled into our seats and watched the 10 billion previews they needed to have with the movie and now we are going to see the Paw Patrol movie and Baby Yoda movie later on this year.
Then the Mario Bros movie played, the kids enjoyed it, and we went home and all peacefully went to sleep. The end.
David Huzzard Writes 