New parents:

Did you know that it is possible not to take an ill-tempered child to a crowded movie theater on a Friday night?

It’s true!

Yes, it’s a little bit unfair that having a kid cramps your style a bit. You want to continue doing the things you’ve always done. Having the fun you’ve always had. And you can, but you have to give a little bit of consideration to the squalling anchors tethered to your nethers before you do so.

Consider:

A movie theater is a great environment for adults! It’s dark and comfortable and conducive to naps if you so choose. There’s only one thing to focus on, which is great news for our aging, overwhelmed brains! (In point of fact, instead of staying home last night stressing about the tax bill that was just passed, or getting my blood in a good boil over the latest news in the Mueller investigation, I headed to the movie theater to block all that out for a few hours and relax. Best choice of my week!)

A movie theater is also a great environment for teens! It’s dark and private and a great opportunity to suck face with your selected face-sucker without the possibility of your parents barging in. And with all those hormones raging through your system, you can easily ignore the loud sounds and bright lights of the film. Win-win!

But a movie theater is not a great environment for young kids! It’s dark — which deprives them of the stimulation they so very much crave! There’s nothing to do but sit there and watch the movie — which deprives them of the stimulation they so very much crave! You can distract them with food, but your popcorn tub and extra-large drink are only so deep — they will run out of things to stuff in their face before long, and then you’re back to the first two problems, except now they’re full of sugar and caffeine! And don’t forget, a five-year-old probably can’t follow the thread of the film without help, which means he will be bombarding you with questions for as long as he is paying attention (to say nothing of the two-year-old you also brought with you for some reason).

Your kids, in short, are likely to make going to the movies an unpleasant experience for you — their parent, who has a biological imperative to love and not murder them — to say nothing of the unsuspecting members of your community upon whom you are about to inflict this pain. And you’re paying to bring your kids with you — you pay more for the experience of going to the movie and pissing everybody off than we paid to come to the movie to have a nice time not thinking about our country circling the drain. Put another way — we put in nice, sensible bids to have a delightful little evening, and you outbid us to pee all over our nice little thing. (Incidentally, you might make an excellent Republican senator!)

Lastly, and not for nothing, not every movie is appropriate for children — let alone children whose ages can be counted on one hand! When the movie contains four of the seven words you can’t say on television, numerous references to sex and orgies, and a literal orgy of violence and terrifying imagery, you might be doing your child a favor to not bring them along for the ride.

It’s just a thought!

You have options:

1. Accept that, as a parent, the life you knew is over. Stay home from the movie theater and check out your movies on Redbox or Netflix like a reasonable sleep-deprived adult. Watch them after the kids go to bed. You’ll fall asleep halfway through, sure, but that’s part of the fun.
2. Find a sitter. Yes, this is inconvenient, and depending on your arrangements, possibly expensive. But weigh it against, if not the displeasure of everybody you’ll be in the movie theater with, your own annoyance at sitting through the movie with your toddler-anchors talking and crying and whining and kicking the seat in front of them and generally doing all the things toddlers do. You may find that the investment is worth it!
3. Go to the movie anyway. It’s not illegal, but everybody will hate you, and if you have a soul, you just might hate yourself.

Finally, if you do find yourself in a movie that’s inappropriate for children with your little bundles of joy, and they start acting exactly the way you would expect a child to act in such a situation, it’s okay to leave. You don’t get bonus points for staying and prolonging the pain for everybody. It’s really okay. Just take the kid (who doesn’t want to be there anyway), your spouse (who also no longer wants to be there), and your self (who should now be fully dead inside), and go.

We won’t hate you for it. On the contrary, we’ll love you.

This has been a public service announcement.

In other news, we saw Thor: Ragnarok last night. It was pretty good, I think. I can’t be entirely sure, because we were distracted by something totally unrelated.

I do know that Chris Hemsworth’s abs may have single-handedly given me an eating disorder.

So there’s that.

This post is part of Stream-Of-Consciousness Saturday.