I ordered movie tickets online with a ten dollar service charge. Reserved seats and purchased tickets were worth it as getting to the theater --later that afternoon, would be a time crunch.
I was right. We arrived at the theater one minute apart. I put my car in park and made a quick child exchange.
We were going to the movies! Me and the four littles. Their mom and Max were blitz shopping in one afternoon for Max's mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
I pulled out the tickets to double check our seats. Row P seats 14-18. I'd carefully chosen to be smack in the middle. I couldn't take any chances of the little ones being distracted by poor seating.
We pulled into row P and moved toward the middle. The family on the opposite side of the row had taken one seat too many. I wasn't going to sit right next to him, so we lost another seat to front and center.
Don't say a word, my better self thought. There's plenty of seats. Plenty of seats with solid screen visibility. Yet, I was slightly irritated. I had to remind myself that all was well.
I pulled out the tickets again to discover that the man had moved two seats too many into our space. I read the seats out loud hoping he'd get the hint. He didn't.
Knowing now what was soon to be revealed, it felt like the oreo-at-the-airport incident-- the woman who pulled out her Oreos and set them on the rest in-between her chair and a man's chair. When he started eating her Oreos, she was incensed. At some point, she realized she was eating his Oreos. Not sure of the details, but details are important.
As is the difference between row P and row Q. When we returned from the drinking fountain and made our way in the dark to row P and our supposedly pilfered seats, both Theo and I realized that we'd sat in row Q.
The pause. The time lapse. I'd allowed time to lapse between the initial incident and the response. What could have been an embarrassing exchange became just another secret reminder of human frailty.
My own.
Few things are better than thoughts confirmed by James the brother of Jesus, who figured this out millennia ago, "...let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath." James 1:19
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