Movie Surprise

Some people will surprise you. You look at everyone, and have a judgement in seconds. In trying to figure out someone as a person in just a few moments, you're probably not going to do too well. Just looking at them and what they're doing in a moment, you can't project too far into the future what their behavior will be and how to handle it. I do think, though, that you can make a snap judgment that handles a short time period.

Suppose that you're faced with sitting next to a stranger at the movies. I think it's not that far-fetched to think you can guess whether someone is going to be a bother over the course of the next two hours, but then it's also very possible for someone to surprise you. The more information you have, the less probable that is, but someone can always surprise you. If a friend can do it, a stranger surely can every time.

I was with a friend at the movies, and we found ourselves wedged in between two groups, with no buffer on my side. There might have been on my friend's side, but right next to me was this middle-aged woman and some companion of hers. I didn't get much of a look at that person. What I know is that the woman felt at liberty to chat with us before the movie. She'd had to move a coat for me to sit down, we thanked her, and there was her opening.

We were there for "Catching Fire". She was a big fan of the Hunger Games novels and so forth, questioning us on whether we'd read the books and advising (I think in jest) that she could get awfully emotional as the movie played out. I took this to mean that she was invested enough in the movie to behave. She might get over-wrought, but that would be the extent of it. That proved to be quite incorrect.

A few times during the movie, she got her phone out. I don't know why. I hope it was very important, but since she stayed to the finish of the movie, I can't see how. She had that phone out for prolonged periods of time which coincided with some of the darker (meaning low-light) scenes of the movie, and her phone must have been set at 150% brightness. It was awfully distracting, and I wouldn't have guessed she'd do that.

Maybe she didn't realize how much a disturbance the light can be. In any case, she focused on the phone to such an extent that I thought I must have been very wrong about her interest in the movie, or else more right than I thought. She either was very bored with the movie and had to occupy herself, or else the movie affected her so much that she couldn't look at it for fear of losing her composure. I suspect it was not that.