back to work today, although the weekend was, as the title says, wonderful. there’s a lot of residual happiness carryover, so it’s been a good day at work. children were the theme of the weekend, to some extent.
not that we had children. or took some with us. or found some there, and brought them home. but our interactions with them.
the first day was at six flags great adventure, in new jersey. as you’d expect, the park was full of kids. and even more than usual probably, because it was inner city camp day or something. there were hundreds of kids running around in matching “camp fill-in-the-blank” t-shirts.
and they were uniformly well-behaved, polite and a joy to be around.
you’d think they’d be going ape-shit, with little to no adult supervision and a park full of mischief to get into. and they had fun, don’t get me wrong. but they said “excuse me” and “please” and “thank you”. and when there was a group that wanted to ride a ride together, they’d ask people if they wanted to go past them in line. and when you let one or two go ahead of you so they could catch up to their group, they’d smile and thank you politely.
don’t tell me kids can’t be well behaved in public anymore. these kids were far better without their parents around than i ever was with my mom right beside me. someone’s doing something right there.
someone’s doing something wrong in mount laurel, new jersey though. after our six flags visit was cut short due to inclement weather (a definite theme for the weekend, unfortunately…), we checked into our hotel and drove to a nearby movie theater (the amc marlton 8) to catch a friday evening showing of “the lady in the water”, which was the best pick of the lot.
theater full of kids, all probably dropped off by their parents in lieu of paying a babysitter. and the kids were a terror. running up and down the aisles, screaming and yelling, talking on their cell phones and to their friends in adjoining seats and aisles. wouldn’t come close to being quiet, even after being shusshed politely and after loudly being told to shut up (that was me. i’m not shy about that sort of thing).
i know i sound like an old fart here, but it’s a public place and i expect, after having paid ten dollars, to be able to concentrate on the movie. i guess i’m spoiled by movie theaters in new york and by going to more expensive imax theaters, where people in general make only appropriate noise.
honestly, i’ve read all about the horror of going to movie theaters these days, and how people just have stopped going and use netflix instead, and i’ve never really experienced it.
now i have.
and the theater staff was useless. some kid not any older than the noisy ones stood there in the front of the theater listening, said nothing to anyone, and left. of course he’s not going to say anything to anyone. he’s a kid, and these are his friends. there needs to be an adult sent in, for adult supervision.
we left, and they did refund my money, though. i’ll give them that. but if i lived in that town, i’d never bother going back. i’m sure there were some kids in there that wanted to listen to the movie, too. i feel sorry for them.
don’t tell me that “they were just being kids”.
so were the kids at six flags.