Saturday, December 19, 2015

A Brief Public Service Announcement

Dear Parents of the World,

Are you considering bringing a small herd of  8 or 9 year old boys to the new Star Wars movie?

You are brave souls.

I'm going to share some thoughts after my experience at the movie this evening. Think of it as "learning opportunities" on how not to piss off your fellow movie-goers. Maybe you don't need them.  Maybe your kids are perfect angels who would never do anything wrong.  I don't know that it will be at all helpful to anyone, really, but it's worth a shot.

**I know parents just love getting unsolicited advice on what to do with their children, especially from people who don't have kids of their own.**

--We all understand that they are children, and they are super excited to see the movie.  We're all excited too.  We are totally willing to cut them some slack on noise due to excitement.

-- Please sit remotely near your group of kids so that you can rein them back in if/when they totally lose their minds.

-- Getting there super early might not be the best idea.  I know, I know, you have to get lots of seats all together.  But 4 hours of sitting still is not necessarily a strong point for that age group.  (I'm judging this solely on my nephew who sometimes needs to just run and burn off some energy.)

-- When the person in front of one of your young charges keeps turning around and glaring at the kid? There's a problem that needs to be addressed.  FYI: kicking the back of the seat in front of you for hours is not cool.  You need to nip that shit in the bud.

-- Not giving any spoilers, but when a kid starts crying?  You need to help them out a bit.

-- When multiple people are turning around to look at the kids?  There is definitely a problem.  And yes, I did finally tell them to shut up after two hours and their running commentary getting progressively louder as time went on.

-- When attempting to gather your charges to leave the theater, don't block the exit.  

-- When one of your charges bangs into another person and almost knocks them over?  You need to apologize, not pretend it didn't happen.  It should not be a totally different kid (who managed to make it down the stairs) who starts apologizing to everyone for his friends being pushy.  

I'm not saying they were bad kids, just really into the movie and super excited.  It was kind of cute at times.  I'm sure it's how they act when watching a movie at home and they just forgot that there were other people around.  

To the parents of the group that was seated in the row behind us tonight:

Good luck with the rest of your evening, especially if you are having a sleepover.  Those boys were super excited, and it looked like you had a mix of really amped kids and those who were obviously ready for bed and getting a touch cranky.  I wish you the best in getting any sleep tonight, and I hope you had the foresight to limit them to drinking non-caffeinated  beverages.  (I speak from experience on that one.  Also, the sugar crash can get ugly.)




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