When One is The Happiest Number

I sat in a movie theater last Saturday night on date number three with a woman I'd met at a party a couple of months ago. Watching a seven-thirty show in a Manhattan movie theater on a Saturday night can feel like seeing a movie at the local theater in Mayberry. The theater gets so crowded you'd think it was the only one in town. But instead of Aunt Bee sitting next to you, you wind up sharing an armrest with some overdressed Real Housewife of the Upper East Side. I like to grab an aisle seat whenever possible, so between getting up to let people in before the movie starts, and getting up to let them out to pee after it does, there's a lot of movement and internal sighing. I've always longed to sit in that single, unattached seat next to the wall that's reserved for the handicapped - never more so than last Saturday night as I was forced to listen to the never-ending movie play-by-play delivered by my date.

"Oh, he's such an asshole. I hate him," she said EVERY single time Alec Baldwin appeared onscreen.

"Awww. They're so adorable together," she'd opine whenever Meryl Streep and Steve Martin had a scene together.

I stared jealously at the sixty-ish looking man who'd grabbed the handicapped seat because there were none others left, and I listened to him howl with laughter, as his wife sat in the row in front of him laughing hysterically too. They seemed so happy to be able to enjoy the movie without having to sit next to each other for the two or so hours, and I longed for that as well. When I asked my movie partner out again after our second meeting, I was on the fence about how I felt about her, but I liked her enough to give it another shot. But as the week before the movie date progressed, I'd grown tired of the hour long phone conversations during which I was forced to hear how much she hates her boss and her roommate. The fact that she was now publicly and annoyingly adding Alec Baldwin to the list of people she couldn't stand, made me start to feel the same way about her.

"Oh my god. What kind of a douchebag does this?" she asked loudly during the scene in which [spoiler alert] Alec Baldwin unwittingly flashes his cock and balls into a webcam, as he tries to seduce Meryl Streep.

"I was wondering the same thing," I thought to myself, as I watched the sixty-year-old guy sitting all alone almost piss himself from laughing.
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