Movie Scare

Yesterday, my daughters and I went to see Marley and Me. The theater was about half full. It was a good movie but such a tearjerker! We were about 3/4 the way through the movie (it was not a quiet scene, either), when we heard about three LOUD popping noises, sounded like they were coming from the other side of the wall to our right, and you could feel the seats shake a bit. There was about a ten-second pause and then more pops.

You think everyone in a movie theater is being quiet during a movie, but when this happened, you could FEEL the tension in the air. It was as people not only stopped talking but stopped breathing, as well. People were sitting straight up in their seats (you know how people seem to slouch during movies to relax), and I know that a lot of people were looking at the Exit signs because I was watching them. The man in front of us put his arm around his wife in a protecting sort of way. About 30 seconds after the second set of pops, a couple of people got up (one from each side) and went to the side exits towards the lobby. My youngest turned to me and said, "Mom, I don't like this. Something is wrong."

It turned out to be nothing, Thank God, but I have to admit that I was thinking to myself (and I missed a lot of the movie thinking), "I need to move my purse out of the way so that I can get these girls down on the floor between the seats." You know things are bad in your country when you automatically think the worse in situations like that, when a child opens the door for Santa Claus and gets shot in the face. It makes me realize that one can never be really prepared for anything like that. Yesterday, in Houston, Texas, at a public movie theater, there could have been another "shooting", and there wasn't anything anyone could have done about it.

Isn't that how life is anyway? Are we ever really prepared for anything that comes along? I thought I was "prepared" when I left my family. Now I am realizing that I left this, I left that, I didn't take care of this before I left, I didn't take care of that. J and I have been talking about the future. I keep stressing that we need to get "prepared" in case we die early on. She thinks we have plenty of time. What I need to realize is that even if we are prepared, there will always be something that wasn't taken care of; things will not go perfectly. One of my biggest fears is that I would be homeless; I'm not sure why that is. I guess because I am not sure of how the laws in this state work. J is self-sufficient without my income; I am not self-sufficient without hers at this time. It's just something scary that I need to let go of.

Well, I am meeting J in Houston at lunchtime, so I had better go get ready. I miss her sooo much when we are not together. I plan to see her everyday at lunch this week if I can.