Dear Man at the movie theater,
What in the world could women have done to you, to make you so hateful towards them? As a human being, I can not imagine ever feeling the need to yell and scream at three complete strangers, in a very public setting (and one intended for fun, at that) because you incorrectly believed they inconvenienced you by your .39 second visit to a kiosk line.
The amount of time that you spent yelling, name calling and making a gigantic ass of yourself far exceeded that, by minutes…
When my girlfriend smiled at you, told you to have a nice day and we turned and left, (I’d like to point out- showing far more maturity and self control than you have, though you are well past our age) and that pissed you off more- causing you to call us the “damned rudest and stupidest broads”, I couldn’t help but wonder how detached your reality is from the real one…
I tried to consider that maybe you were having a bad day. Maybe your cat just died. Maybe your son disowned you (though sadly, I could already see his point), maybe you’d just rear ended someone… Maybe you had cancer… And then I kicked myself because it doesn’t matter. Those things could make someone angry, but you weren’t angry. YOU were mean and hate filled. You were bitter.
You are the one, and people like you, who make this world an ugly place.
I am so glad my child wasn’t there to see unfiltered meanness, just for meanness sake- it would have crushed the very small balloon of hope she has left in human goodness.
I did manage some empathy for your wife, and the other people there with you. Their humiliation was worth the empathy, though the saddest part was that they didn’t seem surprised.
It must be hard to live with you. They must love you a lot.
I don’t see why, honestly.
anyway…
Be kind, don’t bully, show respect,
M
P.s. When I told my husband, it took everything in him to not drive over to that theater, buy a ticket, go into your movie and kick your middle aged ass. I’d be careful what women you publicly seek out to abuse- they might have husbands in an even closer proximity…
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Dear woman who took her family to Les Miserables, a couple of weeks ago,
When you walked in, all dolled up in your theater best- I was really wowed by you. That you had managed to not only get your husband to take the day off, but you had also managed to get your teenage son, tween son and boy-child into suits and well behaved in the 6th row was a miraculous event for me. I kept thinking, they must love her a lot- because wow- those 4 male faces didn’t look like this was where they wanted to be- especially when there was such a big Boise State game going on, on the other side of campus…
I have to admit though, at intermission when the house lights rose and I saw your three boys rise- that I wanted to shake you a little. Your youngest was drawing, through the play. His gigantic sketchpad must have hit the patron’s head (in front of him) at least twice… Your middle child was headphone clad and playing a DS. Your teenager, also wearing ear muff headphones, had apparently been texting the entire time. All i could think was, Why bother? I mean, seriously, theater tickets aren’t cheap… Once that truth began to fade though, it occurred to me how unbelievable rude it was, for the people near you. The lights from the DS and the phone. The hum from the headphones. The clicks from controllers and keys. The sounds of pencil scratching and erasing…
Sweetie, don’t you have a friend or two, who would have gone with you? No? Let’s work on that… Because, as beautiful as Les Miserables is, (And oh, it is!!!) there is no way you truly enjoyed it, with all of that surrounding you…
Honey, you need a girl’s night out- stat… and a Broadway buddy. Fine. I’ll volunteer…
M
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Dear Regal theater group,
Remember, back in July, when I sent you a comment card about how much we loved our local theater management team and how they had handled sensitivity to patrons after the Aurora tragedy? Do you also remember the horribly insensitive things the Boise managers did/allowed? Well, I am writing today to tell you the Boise team has done little to impress me. On my first visit back, since the day I wrote you about, the manager stood less than five feet away while a middle aged man yelled and screamed at my friends and I, simply because he felt we were “rude and stupid” women…
The Regal rep my husband met, when he flew out from NY to address complaints (from me) was really nice… But he might want to consider another trip.
Just Sayin’,
M
rainydayinmay.com 