Me and Gru

 

A strange thing happened to me last night. I wound up watching the computer-animated kids movie Minions: The Rise of Gru, all by myself, alone, in a 500-seat movie theater blasting the film at 120 decibels.

How did I get here, I wondered, stretching out and reclining in my seat.

Well, a little backstory.

My daughters are separated by four years, born in 2004 and 2008. The oldest, known as Little One in these pages, graduated from high school in May and is now about six weeks in to her college education. She lives on a campus about a 40 minute drive from my home. Far enough but not too far. She’s been home three times, but we expect the times we see her to shrink in frequency as she makes new friends at her school and stays more and more weekends there.

All fine and good. We encourage her social development as well as her intellectual, physical, and spiritual. It does, however, have a negative impact. Her younger sister, just starting to navigate the hell that is high school as a lowly freshman, misses her terribly and facetimes her just about every night.

Now, Patch, as my youngest is known here, keeps herself busy. She has a couple of challenging AP classes. She also works two part time jobs: She referees U10 soccer games (boys and girls) on Saturdays, generally 11:30-3, and she is becoming a more and more in-demand baby sitter. I think she’s pulled down something like $400 since the end of summer doing these things.

So she’s busy, but she’s lonely. She does make friends easily, but finds so many of her classmates flakey. There’s a girl a few blocks away that she hangs with, maybe every other weekend, and they go thrifting, go to the mall, things like that. But she misses the constant constant of her life, her big sister.

I have been consciously trying to bridge this gap in her life. I’m her study buddy for algebra and biology. We plan on walking together evenings when the thermometer dips below 80. We started a new tradition: Thursday night movies, her choice. And what she chose to begin with is the animated series Despicable Me and its sequels, as kind of a comforting bit of nostalgia from her younger years.

Which I found I enjoy. I’m a big Steve Carrell fan, and I like the whole Bond supervillain aspect of the films. We both chuckle at the minions. I bought her a stuffed “Bob the Minion” for her birthday two weeks ago. We sat in the upstairs apartment of our home watching Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2, Despicable Me 3, and our favorite, Minions. Last week we settled back and prepared to watch the final installment to date, Minions: The Rise of Gru.

To our horror it was not available to rent! On all these damn apps I have on my TV – Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Hulu, you name it, none streamed this film for rent. Sure, being a 2022 release, you could buy it for $20. But I don’t like buying these streaming movies, because unless you have a physical item in your hand, you don’t really own it. So we exclusively rent the flicks we watch.

Patch was heartbroken. Instead we decided to start on the next sequence of films, her Halloween animated series selections, and we watched Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride. But the unfinished minion business sat heavy on her heart.

The Mrs., not ever wanting anything to sit heavy on her daughter’s heart, did some research, and she located a theater twelve miles away that was still showing the film. She immediately bought tickets for Patch and me for our next Thursday night movie night, which was yesterday.

So she was excited all day. I was working at home, all caught up as the month ended, and she was studying all day for Friday tests. I made us some scrambled eggs for dinner and then we headed off. Found the theater with plenty of time to spare. These theaters today! There was a bar in the lobby, and in the theater itself the big fat chairs reclined, a big red button on each you could press for food service.

Anyway, since Minions: The Rise of Gru was released nearly three months ago, July 1, we didn’t expect a packed theater. However, once we walked in and went to our center seats, we realized that we were absolutely alone! I did a quick calculation – 25 rows with 20 seats in a row – and realized that we had a 500-seat theater to ourselves. So exclusive! Never had this happen to me before, and I’ve been to at least a hundred movies in my life. We kicked back, made bad loud jokes, booed most of the trailers, and then settled in to the main event.

Halfway through, Patch had to use the rest rooms. So she took off, leaving me there in the cavernous darkness, assaulted by the A.D.D.-tinged visuals and booming sound effects. To be honest, she left during the funniest part of the film. I was laughing out loud.

I realized what a crazy, strange world I live in. I would never, ever, ever have told you a few weeks ago that I’d be by myself (even if for only ten minutes), alone in a movie theater, riveted to a movie screen and giggling with childlike innocence.

Such is the state of my existence halfway through my sixth decade of life.