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Food Addict
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I usually never eat at movie theaters. Most movies don’t run over two hours which isn’t long enough to get my stomach churning with hunger. However, there are those special occasions when I know I won’t make it without a
little snack.
The long, LONG “King Kong” remake proved to be the most notorious incident, where I had to run out to the concession stand about three hours through the film, craving any type of food. Thanks to my overpriced bag of Sour Patch Kids, I sat through the rest of that beast hunger-free.
Most times, I’m not as pleased with movie theater food.
One time, I paid almost $4 for a microwaved, shriveled pretzel that looked like a deflated balloon and came wrapped in a plastic bag.
Yuck.
Another time, I ordered a bag of popcorn (almost twice as big as what I consider a “small” size) with butter drizzled on. The top kernels dripped with so much of the yellow slime, it oozed through my clenched fingers with each handful.
Yuck.
It’s not that I want a multi-course meal prepared by a personal chef every time I want to grab some grub at the movies. I don’t even care if my food looks “pretty” or not. I just want it to appear edible and not like wrinkled rubber or covered in artificial butter.
Obviously, that’s too much to ask since everyone knows that gross, plastic-covered food sells better than the normal-looking stuff.
Or does it?
I know of many people who like to break the number one movie theater law and sneak “outside food” in. It’s a well-acknowledged fact that at the movies, patrons eat the food provided there or nothing at all. Still, many people just love to break that rule. Memories of hearing the rustling of candy wrappers as fellow movie theater patrons took them out of their bags or coat pockets – but only after the lights went down – make me snicker.
I’ve always wondered why some people are so attracted to hiding food in theaters. Do they get some sort of adrenaline rush from the possibility of getting caught?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not mocking “criminals” who dare to live on such a steep edge. I’ve snuck food into a theater too.
The incident occurred a few years ago when I spent the summer at an out-of-state ballet camp. I lived with a host family containing two sisters close to my age.
One hot day, my host sisters took me downtown to see the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” film. I soon found out they possessed creative and skilled methods for bringing their own food into theaters. Before we left, they insisted I take a large sweatshirt and purse with me to store the illegal goodies we were about to acquire.
On the way to the theater, we stopped at a gas station and purchased sodas with a variety of candy. Once parked outside the theater, we stuffed the candy down to the bottom of our purses. The sodas didn’t fit, so we slipped them in the wide sleeves of our sweatshirts.
How sneaky of us.
I didn’t hide soda bottles in my sleeves again. They made such a painfully obvious bulge through our sleeves, I knew the theater staff probably saw our hidden treasure and laughed about it behind our backs.
These days, I prefer to grab dinner before I head to the movies and save the four-hour epics like for my DVD player, with my refrigerator only a few feet away.
Francy Marcotte
