Heart Attack

Scott and I finally went to a movie together.  We arrived at the Kaysville Theater in plenty of time to choose from among all the seats in the house.  It's a good thing we got there early.  Four more people came after we did, and to think they might have gotten there first and chosen the very seats we wanted!  As we sat there in the half-dark, we remembered that the last time we went to a movie together was with my ex-boyfriend when he was visiting from Spain.  The movie was A.I.  So ten years ago?  We go to movies; we just don't go together.  It seems like a huge waste of babysitting time to sit next to each other and not interact for two hours. Now that our kids do most of the babysitting, we have to be careful.  Their time is valuable and we don't want to take advantage of them.  Watching kids is hard and our older kids don't exist just to make our lives easier.

And then there's the problem of the popcorn.  Calling it a problem is a stretch, but I like a lot of butter on my popcorn, and Scott thinks it's perfectly acceptable to eat it when it's not dripping with grease.  We're not popcorn-compatible.  Before the movie started, we had already gotten past the golden, glistening, salty part down to the non-buttery popcorn.  I went out and asked for more butter, saying, "My husband says there's not enough butter on the popcorn."  Yes, I sold him out for an extra tablespoon of butter.  Not even butter.  Lard.

And that's not the worst of it.  A half-hour into the movie, Scott thought it would be funny to tell me he was having a heart attack.  You know, from all the butter.  But it's hard to interpret humor in the dark, and a movie isn't the ideal place to explain the premise of a joke.  So he just leaned over and said with a straight face, "I think I'm having a heart attack."

And you know what my first thought was?  My first thought was, "Oh, man, but this is a good movie and I don't want to miss any of it."

Yeah.  Scott tells me he's having a heart attack and my first instinct is to feel inconvenienced.  And then I immediately began thinking through when we (or just me, if it came to that) would be able to come back to the theater, if we did have to leave due to Scott's imminent death.  Friday night wasn't good.  Saturday, we could, but tickets are $3 instead of $2 on weekends and that's just dumb.  Monday, the girls don't get out of dance until 9:45...

"If Scott is, indeed, having a lard-induced heart attack, I may not be able to come back and see the end of this movie until next Thursday, IF THEN!"

That's what I was thinking.  I don't know what to make of this new awareness that I am a terrible person.  I could try to be better, but would it really be fair to Scott to suddenly become someone other than the girl he married?  When he took those vows, he was in love with a self-absorbed narcissist incapable of empathy.  If that's who he fell in love with, who am I to change 17 years in?

But since we're talking about Scott and heart attacks, if he does have one, could someone please mention at his funeral that he gave his life so I could have the right amount of butter on my popcorn?  He loves me.  When we got home from the movie, Scott looked up at all the stars and said, "Isn't it beautiful?"  I gazed down at my large popcorn refill and said, "It IS beautiful, the way the butter glistens in the moonlight."  Maybe I just have a butter problem.  Scott, I just want you to know, I would have driven you to the hospital if you had been having a heart attack.  The popcorn was almost gone anyway, and we could have gone back later for the free refill.