How my Saturday was ruined by people fullfilling negative stereotypes; or: Don't be a jerk!

Do you ever make spontaneous plans to have a nice time only to have everything blow up in your face? Yea well that was my Saturday night. It was the sort of evening that makes me not want to interact with the unwashed masses anymore.

Let me explain...

Saturday started off lovely. The husbeast and I slept in a little before heading down to the Dallas Farmers Market. It was splendid. We loaded up on so much amazing produce and had some good quality time together. After we dropped our haul at the house and made some fresh strawberry lemonade from our bounty, we headed down to the faire site for cast picnic.

The picnic was lovely. The husbeast played volleyball and then fought with wooden swords almost the entire time. I sat and chatted with friends and got to oogle all the fresh babies. It was a nice relaxed afternoon with the people I like most. All in all a wonderful way to end the faire season out, and to spend a Saturday afternoon.

We headed out around 6 for home, but decided we weren't really ready to actually go home. Neither of us were terribly hungry so we decided to see a movie. We pass by a theater on the way home anyways, why not stop and see what is showing.

Now there was some debate over what to see; he wants to see Prometheus, I want to see Snow White and the Huntsman, so we decide on MIB3 because it is the only thing we both want to see. We are pretty good about movie compromising most of the time. Also it helped that there was a non 3D showing of MIB3 withing 40 minutes of our arrival to the theater, and they took passes which allowed us to not pay for the movie.

The husbeast puttered in the arcade for about 15 minutes before we went to sit down. Now the ticket guy pointed us down to the end of the hall to a theater we had never been in before. This was note worthy to both of us, and we soon found out why. The theater was the last one on the end, which is the tiny one with only 8 rows of seats. This theater is normally relegated to craptastic indy movies and movies that are at the bitter end of their run. Certainly this was not the appropriate theater to put in a movie like MIB3.

We double checked and realized we were in the correct theater. At this point we should have just asked for our passes back. I have serious depth perception issues which cause some pretty nasty bouts of vertigo. Sitting too close in a theater is an easy way to trigger that unfortunate response. Still I was going to try sitting in the back row and tough it out.

As the theater slowly began to fill you could see the same reaction on every persons face; "Where the hell are we?". I was happy to know we were not the only people shocked by the size of the theater we were seeing the movie in. It is like they are punishing people for watching the non 3D version of popular movies. Last time it was ridiculously inconvenient show times. Now it is crappy locations.

So there we are, sitting in the unusually narrow row of seats, about a minute from the previews starting, when into the theater walks a man.

Now I feel the need to point out a few things before I continue.

First of all, I don't typically subscribe to stereotypes. I find that they are most often not true, and so I never automatically assume someone is going to fall into that stereotypes. That being said stereotypes happen for a reason, and I really tend to hate people that fit those negative views.

Second, I am fat. I am in no place to judge anyone on their weight, because I have weight issues. I also don't care what you look like at all. I care about people behaving well and being respectful no matter what they look like or what I look like.

Ok back to the story.

So this man walks in, and I tell you now that he fit the not only the stereotype of fat slob, but also over-entitled asshole perfectly. He is a bigger man and he was laden down with food; a fruit smoothie, a large drink, a giant popcorn, and a soft pretzel on a plate. I really didn't pay him much attention beyond the fact that he also looked disgusted with the theater we had been placed in.

Then he came and sat in the seat in front of the husbeast. It was the only aisle seat left the wasn't right in front of the screen. We always sit on the aisle since the husbeast is 6'6" and likes to stretch his legs out into the aisle mid movie when they start to cramp up.

Now I mentioned before that the back row was unusually narrow, and come to find out the seats in the row in front of us were loose and reclined pretty much all the way back unless you actively sat forward. This man sits down and his seat comes flying back right into the husbeast shins, effectively crushing his legs.

This obviously wasn't on purpose. There was no way this man could know that the rows were narrow or the seat was so loose. The husbeast let out a cry of pain and quickly asked the man to sit up, which he did only so he could turn around and see who was talking to him. After we requested he not lean back he told us that he couldn't help it and turned around and proceeded to once again crush the husbeasts legs.

I should mention now that the husbeast has a few anger issues, and has been known to have incidents in movie theaters on occasion. He was trying to be civil, though he was obviously losing his patience as he once again told the man that he was physically hurting him and there was no way he could sit like that. The man responded by leaning further back and saying "I don't care what you do I am going to enjoy my movie."

What the hell? We were there first. There were plenty of empty seats in the theater that he could move to. It is not like we were asking him to move because we were somehow inappropriately offended by his presence. He was actually causing physical pain to the husbeast. We were not being unreasonable.

I could see clearly that this asshole was not going to make any attempt to resolve this situation. He did not care what we did or if we were comfortable. He was going to sit where he wanted, how he wanted, no matter what. I could also clearly see that the husbeast was about to punch the guy in the back of the head. At this point I suggested we trade seats with the man. Yes it was a row closer when I was already too close, but it was better than assault charges.

The guy reluctantly agreed to move. As he was trying to maneuver out of his seat with all his food he dropped his pretzel on the ground. I could see him in the dim movie theater light turning red as he wheeled on us to blame us for his lost pretzel. At this point though he laid eyes on the husbeast who had stood up to his full menacing height. The guy decided to not press the issue and just took the seat we offered him.

Unfortunately he decided to again sit on the aisle which meant that in order for the husbeast not to crush him, he had to lean forward in his seat all the way. This was obviously going to be physically painful very quickly. This solution was not turning out to be much of a solution for us at all.

I also discovered much to my dismay at this point, even if the change in seats had worked physically, I didn't want to sit anywhere near this man. He began hacking and snorting behind us, he was chewing his popcorn so loud that I could hear his crunching and smacking clearly, I am pretty sure he dropped his greasy popcorn on my head, and he kept shifting about making the most repulsive noises imaginable. Some tiny little tween girls had been sitting in the middle of the row, and he refused to get up to allow them to get out, forcing them to literally crawl over him to get out.

We made it through about four trailers before the physical situation and the sounds coming from behind us made us both throw up our hands in defeat and leave. There was no way we were both going to be so uncomfortable in so many senses for the length of a movie.

We explained to a manager the situation as politely as we could and were at least thankful that he was so understanding. He gave us two guest passes to cover the movie we were not seeing and also offered to let us see any movie we wanted for free. Since there wasn't anything we both wanted to see, and the fact that the husbeast was now in a really foul mood, we decided to just take our passes and go home.

Sadly the rest of the evening was ruined since it was after 8 by the time we got home and the general fact that the bad mood sort of permeated into everything else we did including eating dinner and checking our email.

I am so disappointed on so many levels. I am disappointed at Cinemark for again making very poor choices in how to handle the non 3D version of movies. I am disappointed in that fat asshole for giving fat people and people in general a bad name. I am disappointed that the episode ruined our evening and left a dark cloud hanging over what was otherwise an incredibly pleasant day.

People suck.