Saved!

Heather Matarazzo, Mandy Moore and Elizabeth Thai in Saved! 

One of the things we believe in is that you should pay for all of the movies you see in a theater. Yes, that means even if other folks are theater hopping, one should still pay.

So we went to the movies yesterday. There were 4 in our party. First up was The Stepford Wives. The lines to buy tickets were long. Even the line to get into the theater after you purchased your ticket was long.

We were planning a double feature.

As the tickets for The Stepford Wives came up, I passed 3 of them to my wife and daughters. They got in the line to enter the theater.

I gave my second request to the ticket agent. This time I needed 3 for The Terminal and 1 for Saved!. The ticket machine quickly shot out the 3 tickets for The Terminal. The ticket for Saved! jammed. Just a tiny edge of the ticket was visible. My agent strained in several attempts to dislodge the ticket.

Just then, a couple of women pressed up against me and asked if they could bump ahead of me to get a refund on their tickets. I indicated that the machine was jammed. The people behind me could be heard working up a huff.

My agent finally gave up and went to get the manager. The manager arrived and disappeared under the counter. The adjacent ticket agent started lending a hand to jerk the tiny ticket edge while he talked to customers in his line.

Finally, my grim faced ticket agent informed me that our line would be moving to the left. Directly to my left was another line. The "left" he was referring to was 2 windows to the left. That meant my line had to walk through the near-left line to a new windown.

Panic.

Ok. So we all herded through the crowd. By the time we got to the new window, other hopeful ticket purchasers had spotted the opening window. They jumped out of their lines and converged upon my new window.

Luckily (?) the people behind me were quite militant about the rules of lines. They complained about the situation to all who could hear. They poked me in the back a few times and told everyone that I was first and they were behind [poke] me. The ticket-exchange ladies were back as well. They kept pushing me from the right trying to get the attention of the ticket agent by saying "excuse me, excuuuse me!" but he never looked up at them.

He finally told me he was ready to print my missing ticket but he'd forgotten what it was. I showed him the 3 tix for The Terminal and explained I needed one for Saved!

There was a whiz and a chunk and my missing ticket was finally produced. I thanked him and disappeared quickly into the theater...not wanting to see how the drama would unfold between the pokers and the exchangers.