Finally experienced Jurassic Park. You don’t just see Jurassic Park. Every time Little Fella decides to revisit the Park via that glorious medium of DVDism, the awesome heart pounding, throat drying, palm sweating begins. The Freddie Krueger movies, Friday the 13th movies, the Chainsaws, ta da, ta da, all of those only left partial tastes in my recovery system. Once I figure out how many cackle bladders are used in the making of splatter/slasher movies, I determine how high the chances are that I’m going to expend even one dime or minute toward my own heart failure.
Jurassic Park didn’t get this same deliberation. It had Steven Spielberg behind it, and Sam Neill, and Laura Dern, and the great Sir Richard Attenborough. All of that prestige clouded my judgment enough to get me engrossed in the story line, at least. By the time the T-Rex got loose, I was hooked and couldn’t have quit if I’d wanted to.
Mama worked so often that I only remember her going to the movies with us three times in my life. She said she went more often, but my clay-footed childhood memory is infallible. The first movie I saw in the theater with Mama was “Gone With The Wind.” Our grandmother, Mammy, had come to visit, and we took her to see it.
The burning of Atlanta scared the bejeebers out of me and I spent the entire fire in the lobby. The usher kept pestering me to go sit down. I’ll never know just what I said, or how he might have snickered behind his hand, but he let me stay there, peeking in the door occasionally, while Atlanta burned.
After Rhett didn’t give a d--- anymore, it was time to get the 400 pounds of flesh out of two seats. Mammy (all 250 pounds) spilled over her seat and Mama, 18 months pregnant with Brother # 3, couldn’t move. I have the most outrageous mental picture of the usher and the owner standing in the seats in front of Mama and Mammy, pulling on the women’s hands to get them standing on their numb feet. Brothers #1 & 2 and I hooted with laughter (for which I’m sure we paid dearly), echoing in the, by then, empty theater, while we waited until parts below Mammy's and Mama's waists worked again. To this day, whenever I see “Gone With The Wind,” I am reminded of the honor Mammy paid us by going to the movies with us. She was so large, she couldn’t sit comfortably, nor did she have any desire to see most movies. Mammy only saw three movies, at the theater, in her life. The first was “Gone With The Wind,” the second was “Gone With The Wind,” and the third was, you guessed it, “Gone With The Wind.” I was privileged to view that classic the third time with her. I hope they have wider seats in heaven’s theater, so Mammy doesn’t have trouble going to see GWTW.
The last time I enjoyed an in-the-theater movie with Mama, I was 17 and announced that I would be going to see the “M” rated (remember those?!) “Doctor Zhivago.” Didn’t ask if I could go, just stated that I was going. Daring! Mama wasn’t too sure about that (the attitude or the movie), but when it was revealed that she had also planned on going with a friend, she couldn’t very well fault me. So she and her friend sat in front of my friend and me (you don’t sit in a movie with your mother when you’re 17!) through all the love scenes in “Doctor Zhivago” and I fell in love with steamy brown eyes for the first time. Hey! Maybe that’s why Better Half has brown eyes!
Mama wouldn’t have gone with us to see “Jurassic Park,” even if she had lived longer, but every time I “do” a theater movie with one of my kids, I think about what it took to get Mama into a theater. I hope my children’s memories of me in the theater, with them, are as cherished.
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