Tolerance

My mom and I took the girls to see 'Kit Kittredge: American Girl' at the dollar movie last week. Well really we were taking Alexandria, since Olivia is 2 and probably wouldn’t watch much before falling asleep. We’ve taken her to a few movies recently and she was fairly well behaved as opposed to last summer when she was not movie theater age. About 10 minutes into the movie it was apparent that she was not going to be subdued that easily. Now keep in mind this is the dollar movie, so we only paid 1.50 each and there were only three other families in the theater. One family who was sitting behind us consisted of a man in a dress shirt and slacks, his wife, who was also wearing somewhat dressy attire (especially for the dollar movies) and their three children who were, (yep you guessed it!) also dressed up. I only mention this because if you frequent the dollar movie you’d know they probably seemed out of place to begin with.

Now as soon as Olivia started talking out loud we were hushing her and trying to distract her, but for anyone whose spent any time around a two year old, you know that sometimes they are just not hushed or distracted. Well apparently the fashionably dressed woman behind us was ssshhhing Olivia every time she would talk but I never heard it, my mother told me this much later. So at one point I took her out of the theater to try and get her back in movie mode so we could go back in. When I re-entered we sat at the back, because the last 6 rows were empty. Olivia continued to occasionally talk but let me just say, 1) This was a kid’s movie-meaning you didn’t have to pay attention to every detail and clue to solve some big high drama mystery and I think the general audience understands that at kid’s movies there may be kids talking out loud. 2) She wasn’t talking non stop, she would just occasionally bust out with some random question really loudly.

SO. Back to the hoity-toity lady behind us with her snooty looking fam. She gets up like an hour into the movie and heads to the bathroom but on her way, stops by me and says with a phony smile “you might want to take her out, she’s being pretty disturbing” and kept walking. Then I had one of those moments that I have every now and then. Where someone confronts me and I stand there shocked with my mouth open, thinking I should say something but no words come to my mind. I think I may have even nodded dumbly. I could feel my face turn red, I could feel myself getting angry and defensive. How dare this woman tell me my sweet baby girl is being “pretty disturbing”? How dare she think she had the right to tell me this? Afterall she only paid a buck fifty to get in. So I get up, pick Olivia up, because she was standing in the aisle, and walk to the door. Then the stubborn part of me who never likes to do what other people tell me to do, stood there, not being able to open the door. I contemplated just standing at the back of the theater until the woman came back, just so she could see that I didn’t have to do what she wanted. But, then Olivia was really chatting it up at this point since we were standing so close to the exit. So we stepped out and stood right by the theater door. The woman returned from the bathroom and I didn’t even look up, I pretended to be reading the movie poster. She said “thanks, I have two of my own so I understand” and then she tried to touch me on the elbow in a friendly gesture. But, I didn’t even look at her, I didn’t respond at all. I just stared at the poster. She went back inside and Olivia and I spent the last 40 minutes of the movie sitting outside waiting for my mom and Alexandria. I was soooo angry. I was angry that I couldn’t voice all the retorts that I so cleverly came up with after the fact. Why did she say she understood? She clearly didn’t or she would have been able to tune out the ramblings of a two year old in the middle of a kid’s movie. And, as much as I hate to admit it, I was angry with Olivia for being loud and not minding. But, then it wasn’t her choice to go to the movies. So I think this was a good lesson in being tolerant of those around us. I should have tried to be more tolerant of this woman (that I tried to vaporize with my death stare after the movie let out), and she should have tried to be more tolerant of my sweet angelic 2 yr old. Okay so she’s not really angelic but she’s just a little person! And she wanted to talk!