Soaked in Butter and Shame

By Tyler

We went to see the new X-Men movie on Friday.  Regardless of what Trevor and Travis think their reasons for coming home for the summer were, really it was so the Kneisly men could all go to see this summer’s movies together.  But not all of them.  Really, just X-Men and Star Trek.

We arrived to the movie theater at exactly the time that the movie was supposed to start.  I was the first one to buy my ticket and since I’d left my house in a hurry, I was hungry.  While everyone else bought their tickets I rushed inside and over to the concession counter, hoping that they had something more substantial than just popcorn or candy.

The young girl behind the counter addressed me, “Can I help you, sir?”  I glanced nervously over my shoulder expecting the rest of my family to be coming into the movie theater from the box office at any second.  I knew the movie had already started and was wondering how hard it would be for all of us to get good seats.

“Ummm, yes,” I muttered, glancing back to the girl.  Something caught my eye.  A sort of green box on display along side the popcorn and drinks.  “What’s that?'” I asked, pointing.

“Oh,” the girl started, looking over her shoulder in a bored, routine sort of fashion.  “Those are our new pizzas”.

“Pizza?  Are they any good?”

“Oh, very,” she said.  She wasn’t very convincing and I raised a suspicious eyebrow.

“How big are they?”  I was still very aware that my family had probably already filed into the movie theater by now.  I imagined I was already missing the opening credits, but I was so hungry.  Now that I knew that I could have pizza, it was all I wanted.  Still, I wasn’t going to be tricked into shoveling out $6.00 for a pizza that wasn’t any bigger than my drink’s lid.

“Would you like to see the box?”  This question seemed strange.  Would the size of the box really be any indication of the actual size of the pizza?  My mind suddenly became filled with the image of  dozens of theater employees dutifully cramming as much pizza as they could into my little green pizza box before struggling to clamp the little cardboard latch on the box shut and handing the dense brick of pepperoni and cheese to me.  I shook the image off; I was late for the movie and I didn’t trust the theater employees to ever want me to be that well fed.

“No, that’s ok,” I said.  “Just give me a medium drink and a popcorn.”

“Are you sure?”  She asked.  “It’s really good pizza!”

I contemplated the advice my fleshy vending machine was dispensing me.  Her excitement seemed sincere.  There wasn’t much of a price difference between the popcorn and the pizza and so, logically, the girl behind the counter must have tried the pizza and found it to be far superior in flavor than the popcorn.  Unless…

“You don’t get paid commission on concession sales, do you?”

She looked confused.

“You know.  Extra money for sales.”

“Oh!  No.  No, we don’t.  I don’t think.”  Either I’d figured out her scheme or she was genuinely disarmed by the question.  I could see her rolling the idea around in her head as if maybe it were possible her coworkers were in on a pay plan she hadn’t heard about until just now.  I had to bring her back to the problem at hand.

“Fine, give me one pizza and a medium drink.”

She looked happy.  I handed her my money.  She disappeared for a second and came back with a cardboard cup full of coke.

“Here you go!  Your pizza will be ready in five minutes.”

“Five minutes!  My movie’s already started!  You didn’t tell me I’d have to wait for the pizza.”

“Well you do.  You can always just come back and get it whenever you can step out of your movie for a minute.”

I wasn’t sure what else to do.  I grabbed my drink and started toward the theater.  I was still hungry, but now I was annoyed that I’d have to get up during the movie to come back out to the lobby to get my food.  I pushed through the double doors that led inside the dark theater.  The carpeted walls of the narrow hallway that ran alongside the stadium seating was dimly illuminated by the light of the images reflected from the screen.  I was missing the movie.

I walked quickly through the hall toward the first row of seats.  The screen became visible and enormous as I exited the hallway into the main part of the theater.  I could tell by the action on the screen that my movie had started, but only just barely.  I’d missed the opening credits.  I turned around to look at the rows of seats to see where my family was sitting and realized that the theater was full.  My eyes adjusted to the dark and in between bright images thrown up onto the screen I saw Trevor on the opposite side of the theater, a few rows up, waiving his hand to let me know where they were.

I made my way across the first row, apologizing as I went.  I reached the stairs on the opposite side and made my way up to Trevor.  He was seated near the end of his row with an empty seat left available for me between himself and Travis, with Travis sitting on the very end.  I excused myself past Travis and sat down next to Trevor.

Trevor, to my left, was indicating wordlessly that I hadn’t missed much of the movie at all.  To my right, Travis was munching on popcorn.  Popcorn!  I didn’t remember seeing my family stop at the concession stand, but I could have easily missed Travis buying popcorn.  Happily, hungrily, I leaned closer to him and reached my left arm into his bucket of popcorn.

“Sure, just help yourself,” Travis said to me.  He had a sort of sarcastic tone to his voice.

“Thanks,” I said back.  I hoped he could sense that I was earnestly thankful.  I couldn’t get my hand around a big enough handful of popcorn and so I rummaged around a little more.  I thought it was a little strange he’d already eaten so much, there was almost nothing left!  But, if he had been sharing the popcorn with the rest of my family before I got there, I could understand how my fingers were scraping the bottom, just trying to get just a few kernels more of that buttery goodness.  It also might have explained his sarcastic tone.  His deep, gruff, sarcastic tone…

Deep…

Gruff…?

Since when did Travis have such a deep voice?  My hand stopped digging.  I turned my head just a little and looked away from the screen to Travis’ face.  Since when was Travis so bald?

It wasn’t Travis.  And my hand was not in Travis’ popcorn.  I didn’t know who the guy was next to me but my hand was still buried deep in his food.  I quickly pulled it out.

“Oh my gosh.  Oh my gosh!  I am so sorry!  I thought you were my brother!  I am so sorry!”

The stranger whose popcorn I had fondled didn’t say anything back to me.  I did my best to scoot away from him, but theater seats were never known for their roominess.  Embarrassed, I pretended to be grossly interested in the movie, but I could feel heat rising from my skin and my heart was racing.  I was humiliated.

Humiliated and hungry, actually.  My thoughts returned to my pizza.  I could imagine my pizza in it’s little movie theater oven somewhere, the crust becoming golden and the cheese sweating a little from the heat as it melted.  I’d only been in the theater for all of sixty seconds and I’d already doomed myself to not leave it until the movie was finished.  There was only one person between me and the stairs to exist the theater, and there was no way now that I was going to ask that guy to let me by, just so that I could leave and come back with a hot pizza.  If I’d ingratiated myself into his popcorn by way of mistaken identity, I could only imagine how his hand might find it’s way into my pizza by way of vengeance.  There was no use.  I knew I’d just have to sit it out.

The movie went by.  Every five minutes or so my mind would cycle back through the only things I could think about; the popcorn, the pizza, my hunger, my embarrassment…  I learned a lot about Hell while I waited out that hour and forty-seven minutes.  I learned that being in Hell is dependant on only two conditions.  First, there’s no one to blame but yourself.  Second, there’s no escape.  If ever a Sunday school teacher asks for the definition of Hell, I can respond with a surety that it is being stuck in “X-Men Origins” desperately wanting a pizza you’ve already paid for, but being unable to get it because of your brazen attempt to steal food from the stranger sitting next to you.

Finally the movie was over.  Apparently there was some hidden scene that was supposed to show up after the end credits, but I wasn’t going to stick around.  I bolted out of my seat the instant the movie’s closing scene dematerialized into the director’s name.  I ran to the lobby, bobbing and weaving as I went.  I arrived at the concession counter and was pleased to see that the young girl who’d tricked me into ordering the pizza had also been apparently stuck in one place for the last hour and forty-seven minutes.  I moved toward her.  Her eyes flashed a momentary lack of comprehension reminiscent to our earlier encounter.

“I’m the guy who ordered the pizza.”

“That was, like, before the movie started!  You mean, you still want it?”

She sounded surprised.  I was instantly concerned for countless others who’d fallen for this same trickery who had possibly never recovered their own pizzas.

“Yes I want it.  Is it still warm?”  I asked.

“Well, yeah.  It’s still warm,” she replied.

“How’s that?”

“It’s been in the oven the whole time!”

She turned promptly on the spot to a small oven the size of a bread box, opened it, and recovered one of the green boxes I’d seen earlier.  She brought it to me.

“Here you go!”

Greedily, I took the box and moved to a small table set up near the arcade games at the entrance of the lobby.  I cracked open the box, and…

And…

And, what do you think?  It was sitting in an oven for an hour and a half!  It was black and hard as a rock!  I threw it in the trash and decided to go out for Jack-in-the-Box.  I wouldn’t have been satisfied with the pizza after all.  Turns out it hadn’t been any bigger than my drink’s lid.