MaryJanice Davidson: Wastin' away in Geezerville

My friends and I are old, by which I mean we aren't 24. (Or 17, if we lived in Hollywood.) And, frankly, we all look great. But when we go to the movies, we enter Geezerville. For that matter, when I need to get a pop (soda, fizzy drink, or Satan's sippy cup to those of you in places that aren't Minnesota) from one of those new-fangled machines, we enter Geezerville. (Now I've got Buffett's Margaritaville stuck in my head: "Wastin' awaaay again ... in Geezerville ..." And my Buffett reference has confused everyone under 25.)

Movies 101: You use the Internet to see when and where the movie you want is playing. Or call them, I guess? (The theater. Don't waste time calling the Internet; it never answers.) In our case it was (don't judge) Unfriended, because my friend Kathy and I love terrible horror movies. Godsend, The Happening and The Lego Movie, I'm looking at you.

(Disclaimer: I'm deliberately misspelling Kathy's name to protect the not-remotely-innocent.)

So Unfriended was playing at AMC Inver Grove 16, and we agreed to meet there. Nothing we haven't done a hundred times. Except just as I'm pulling into the parking lot, Kathy calls me. Twice. (I never answer the phone while driving. Not because I'm an especially careful driver; I'm just too lazy to drive and talk.) I park, call her back: "I'm in the parking lot. Everything OK?"

"Yes, it's just, where do you want to sit?"

"What?" Good God, how should I know? Why does she need to know this? Has she finally become obsessed with me? It happens a lot, because I'm wonderful. It's my burden, being wonderful. "I've got no idea."

"Well, I'm buying our tickets and they want to know."

They? Ah. So the theater employees are obsessed with me. Well, I watch a lot of movies there, so.

"Again, no idea. I also don't know where I'm going to park at Cub tomorrow, or when I'm going to get around to paying the electric bill. I mean, it'll be by the end of the month, but I haven't narrowed it down to the day."

"They're putting us in row seven."

"Well, that's a relief. I'm walking now." I was. I'd locked the car and was headed for the lobby. "Walking and talking, and you know I hate that."

"No, you hate talking and driving. You don't mind walking and talking."

Ugh, friends. They hang out with you for years and think they know all about you.

So I walked in and whoa. The theater had undergone quite the revamp in the last couple of months. Most things — the multiple pop and slushie machines — were new. Some — stanchions with belts forcing us like rats through mazes to get to the ticket counter, c'mon, really? — were old.

We decided that we'd get snacks, mostly because we always get snacks. Kathy enjoys a bucket of popcorn so large she could use it as a garbage can. Me, I'm a sucker for Coke slushies. And Peanut M&M's. (I may have mentioned my fierce abiding love for Peanut M&M's in another column.)

Self-serve! Which is a big-time saver, so good for the theater because the snack line really moves. But bad for me, because I don't have an engineering degree. And you need one to operate these things.

I'd first confronted such a beast months ago at Noodles & Company. It was a tall shiny machine covered with many buttons and a screen crowded with what appeared to be every soda product in all their iterations: diet, regular, caffeine-free, cherry, etc. (Before this machine I didn't even know Coke came in Diet Cherry-Orange-Rhubarb.) By pushing various buttons, you could coax the machine to spit out whatever terrible-for-you beverage you wanted to suck down. (I'm not slamming pop, because I love it. I'm slamming my terrible snacking habits.)

But the whole thing was so tall and shiny and daunting and new, I knew at once what I had to do: find a teenager. I'd left mine at home, so I looked around, spotted a few and walked over to them.

"I'm old, I don't know how to do this," I whined by way of greeting. "It's shiny and it scares me. Make it give me something to drink." They were so amused by my complaining command (commanding complaint?), two of them came right over. They did ... something, I dunno, too thirsty to pay attention, and then I had a Coke.

So back in the present, at the theater, I sort of knew what to do. Even so, I pressed the wrong button, then the right one, spilled, refilled, grabbed two lids by mistake, realized both were the wrong size, grabbed another one, spilled again, fumbled for napkins, dropped the right-sized lid, scooped it up, slapped it on top of the cup, started to walk away, realized I'd forgotten a straw, jogged back and nearly tripped over someone as confused as I was — "Wait, I don't want diet rhubarb boysenberry ginger ale!") — got the straw, ran back to Kathy.

"The nice thing about those machines," she observed, "is you really feel you've earned the beverage."

"I do!" A pillaging Viking wasn't as happy with his booty as I was with my drink. "I do feel I've earned it."

Into the theater we go, where we were confronted by a sea of what looked like crimson La-Z-Boy recliners. Probably because that's what they were.

"Cripes! No wonder we had to have assigned seats." Kathy squinted at her ticket. "Where do we sit?"

"Seven D," I said. "I think."

"How did you even see that?"

"I don't know. I don't think I could find it again." I squinted at my ticket in the low light. "Nope, it's gone. Do you see any numbers?"

"I can barely see the seats!"

We looked up, down, all around. No indication of which seats bore which numbers. I felt a seat. Nothing in Braille, either. And hey, no gum!

"Hell with it," Kathy said, and plunked herself into the nearest one, which is why we're friends.

I followed her shining example and, "Whooof!" The seat fought back against the power of my butt and instantly reclined.

"How'd you get it to do that?"

"Dunno," I said, staring at the ceiling. "I feel like it's going to throw me. Or devour me." I fumbled around, feeling for a button, an escape hatch, an eject switch. Nothing.

Wide plush reclining seats in a theater are great ... unless you don't want to be forcibly reclined, which I didn't. The seat was non-con reclining me! The more I wiggled and groped for a button, the further flat it went. I eventually accepted my fate.

"We're too old for this theater," I whined.

"That's OK, we're too old for the movie, too."

Weirdly that made me feel better. Just then several people came in and were deeply confused: Can anyone see the seat numbers? Where are the seat numbers? We get why they assigned us seats, but how do we know which seats are ours? This is certainly a puzzler! Let's talk about it in voices that get steadily louder as our confusion increases!

"Ugh," I managed, still staring at the ceiling.

Kathy snickered into her popcorn bucket. "I like how they think if they get louder, the problem magically fixes itself."

"If this thing makes me go any more horizontal, I'll be ... uh ... something that's really horizontal." (Me sometimes not good with words).

"That chair owns you," my (ahem) friend observed. "You live there now."

"Not helping," I managed through gritted teeth.

Luckily, one of the group said, "Are you sure you're in the right seats?"

"We have no idea if we're in the right seats," I told the ceiling, "at all."

"It's just, we're a party of five, and when we made our reservation ..."

Reservation? For a movie? No. The madness ends here.

"Take 'em," I said, struggling free of the thing like a mouse trying to escape the belly of a boa constrictor. "We'll sit somewhere else."

"OK, thanks."

We struggled to our feet, went up another row, sat down in new seats. "Enjoy the broken chair, tardy noisy jerks," I hissed in triumph.

"There we go. I thought you were being strangely accommodating."

When I wasn't being non-con reclined, I could actually focus, so I felt around and located the appropriate button.

"Whoa!" I sloooowly went horizontal again. "OK, this is nice. I like a controlled recline as long as I can stop it at any time."

Then the movie started, which was about a ghost in the machine or social media killing everyone or annoying teens biting the big one via Skype, I was too enchanted with my seat to pay close attention. I might have napped, but I'll neither confirm nor deny. The chair, like the woman who does my highlights, keeps all my secrets.

MaryJanice Davidson is the international bestselling author of several books, including the Betsy the Vampire Queen series (book 14, Undead and Unforgiven, comes out in October). She has published books, novellas, articles, short stories, recipes and rants. Readers can contact her at contactmjd@comcast.net and find her on Facebook. She lives in St. Paul, Minn., and has been sentenced to a husband, two teenagers and two dogs.