Why I Decided To Button It
Life is full of little choices and today I began to think I had made a bad one. That was my thought at five o'clock tonight when I switched on the radio and heard about Caley Thistle's two-nil victory over Hibs.
Why hadn't I gone to the game? Why had I not been listening to the commentary on Sportsound? Why had I spent a sunny afternoon sitting in a darkened cinema watching a movie that seemed to defy the laws of physics and actually stretch the very fabric of time?
was the flick in question. It's the story of a boy who is born old and becomes younger as the years go by. We in the audience, however, seem to age decades as the story unfolds. I actually fell asleep for a few minutes but was roused back to semi-consciousness by a strange clicking noise from the seat behind me. I turned to see a man struggling with the safety cap on a bottle of pills. I'm guessing he was medicating himself with some sort of stimulants. Resisting the temptation to beg one from him, I made my way to the foyer and bought a bucket-sized cup of black coffee. I returned to my seat and exchanged a quick glance of shared suffering with the pill-popper. "We're both gonna get through this," I wanted to say, but didn't.
So why was I there? Well, because I'm the kind of great father who is prepared to sacrifice an afternoon at the footy so that he can take his teenage daughter to the movies. Mrs. Z, meanwhile, went to the game with our son. This is the modern way, don't you know?
Mind you I did begin to doubt that I was acting in the best interests of my little girl. The movie was so long that I thought she might have missed a year or two of school by the time it finished. Look, I don't want to be too harsh here - it was a great story - but it just took an hour too long to tell.
My daughter summed it up better than any critic I've heard. I asked her if she'd enjoyed the film:
"Yes, but there was a lot of it that wasn't really needed."
Besides, I don't think I made a bad choice after all. I'm guessing there will be a time when she wont ever want to go to the cinema with her old dad.
That time will probably come far too quickly.
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