A Film Viewing Experience

As part of my Film Application process, I have to go through an interview where I tell about a film viewing experience.  When I sat down to write the writing sample for next week's creative writing class, I decided I'd try to put on paper what I wanted to say in my interview.  It came out a little more nostalgic than how I think I'm going to actually tell it, but here it is in all it's glory, haha.  Honestly, when I was asked about a film viewing experience, this is the very first thing that popped into my head.  I wish I had a better memory.

I almost cried when I read through it after writing it.  Gosh, I'm so homesick.

            I was eleven years old, and entirely too ecstatic to be at the movies on a Saturday morning, just Daddy and me.  I didn’t know what we were there to see, but it really didn’t matter.  We watched TV together all the time, but we never went to the movies all by ourselves!  It wasn’t that I was excited to get away from my mom, or anything.  I liked going to the movies with her, too.  I think I was just happy to do something special with my dad that I’d never done before.  He held my hand all the way from the truck to the lobby of the dollar theater.

            He bought us tickets to something called Star Wars II.  As we sat down right in the middle of row, Dad explained to me what clones were.  Then, he quickly tried to tell me what had happened in a previous movie—or was it movies?—so I wouldn’t be totally lost.  I didn’t really understand any of it, but it was interesting.  When the movie actually started, I had no idea what was going on most of the time, but it had a lot of action and running and shooting, so I liked it alright.  It was my very first experience with science fiction, and I was definitely intrigued.

            It wasn’t the movie that made it special, though.  We were the only ones in the whole theater, so I sat with my legs draped across his lap.  I could ask aloud why something happened, and what something meant, and my dad could answer, because there wasn’t anybody around us to bother.  We had a great big bag of popcorn all to ourselves, a bag of regular m&ms and a bag of peanut m&ms that we took turns trading.  Honestly, I only remember one scene from the entire movie, and nine years later, I still don’t understand Star Wars.  Mostly, I just remember that I went to the movies with my dad, just the two of us.