To be honest, I really don’t care for the use of the word ‘nostalgia’. To me it sums up a time in our lives that we will never, ever be able to relive or recover. For me, that time would be a day at the movies with my cousin. From the time that we were maybe 13 years old and until we were 17 or 18, every Sunday afternoon was movie day for the two of us. My cousin lived right next door to me so it was always pretty easy to cajole either my mom or his mom to drop us off and pick us back up when the movie was over. So, with enough money for the ticket, popcorn and a soda (the essentials of movie watching), we would pile into the car and our adventure would begin.

     Now, there were two theaters that we would frequent each and every Sunday. One was the Palmetto Theater; the other was the Hillcrest Theater. If you didn’t find us at one theater then you’d find us at the other. I’m sure you can pretty much guess what our favorite type of movies was. If you said horror movies then you win the gold star for the day and you can skip naptime and go play on the monkey bars. Anyways, we saw every slasher film we could get our young, impressionable eyes on. Every Friday the 13th, Happy Birthday to Me, The Funhouse. The best part about the whole experience was the crowd. I remember when we went to see Grizzly. At the end of the film, when the helicopter pilot turns his rifle around to defiantly take a swing at the bear, the audience went nuts. This guy was going to go down swinging, God love him! Between the smell of the popcorn, the cold soda washing down our throats, the crowd going wild and a great movie, my cousin and I had the time of our lives.

After watching this movie I grew up to be a perfectly normal guy...

...or did I?

    To quote Ray Liotta in Goodfellas; “And now it’s all over.” I’ve since grown up and married the sweetest woman in the world. I have no idea what happened to my cousin. The last time we talked was when my mother died. That’s been ten years or more. Going to the movies is certainly not the same anymore. You go to the movie nowadays you’re lucky to have twenty people in the theater. Out of those twenty, maybe five are interested in the movie. Other than that, you got rudeness all around you. There are people texting or talking on their cell phones with no regard to anyone else but themselves. There’s teenagers talking or laughing throughout the entire film oblivious to the movie playing right before their eyes.  I was watching CaptainAmericaa few weeks ago. There were a group of teenage girls directly behind me talking and laughing during the film. After about thirty minutes of this I turned around and said “Would you please be quiet?!?” They looked at me as if I had given birth through my ear canal.

    As for the crowds getting excited by what’s going on with the film, that just doesn’t happen anymore. I’ve seen occasions where someone will cheer a pivotal moment in a film only to be told to shut up. People have become too cynical to cheer a great moment in a film. If it doesn’t directly involve them then they don’t care.

    For this post I’m supposed to tell you why this moment in my life is nostalgic to me. I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to tell you that it’s a moment in my life that I will never, ever get back and that I will never, ever forget.