It is the best time to watch a movie. While technically having less romance than a night at the theater and missing the coziness of a flick night at home, a weekday afternoon spent in a theater has its own kind of glamor and thrill.
First, you know you should be ironing out the details of your lesson plans or finally finishing off those tasks on your to-do list. But instead, you are one of the few people at the movies, enjoying the cool air and the faint whiff of popcorn. Second, you relish the fact that is really only you and a handful of other people in the large expanse of the theater, making it feel as if the whole movie is spun in its reel just for you. It was your sister who first taught you the glory of afternoon movie watching, of entering the dark cave to be told a story, to lose track of time and emerge into the late afternoon sunlight reborn, refreshed.
Your first afternoon mid-week movie happened years ago, on another late summer day just like this one. It was Mama Mia and there was only you and a little old lady who clapped furiously when the film was over. Then, too, you could have been gearing up for school but chose instead to indulge in the sanctity of story-telling, the comfort of being sucked into another world, another time even if (or especially because?) it was to an ABBA soundtrack.
Now you find it has been too long since you had the theater almost to yourself, too long since you forgot about regular schedules and simply enjoyed a luxurious afternoon at the movies. So you take in another film, Magic in the Moonlight, with your mother after an unexpectedly large glass of wine for lunch that served to leave you both pleasantly relaxed. Over the previews, you both giggle over the surprisingly accurate comments of the two elderly women in front of you: "That movie looks too heavy," "I'd see that," "Oh dear, who would want to watch that on Christmas day?"
For a little while, you are blissfully lost in a world of jazz and flapper girl style and the French countryside and a story that only serves to punctuate your belief that magic is in every corner of life--including an almost-empty movie theater in the middle of a hot summer weekday afternoon.
