Moving//Picture

Writer-ish Prompt #193: Write about a birthday.

Three birthdays, three movies.

2002, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. My parents let me invite my friends to come to the nearby, small movie theater where we each get individual cardboard boxes, a movie theater lunchable if you will, with popcorn (or nachos), candy, and a small drink. If my memory serves, the movie cuts out in the middle and we wait around, throwing popcorn at each other waiting for it to restart. There is cake afterwards back at the apartment, probably the classic whale of ice cream from the now defunk Carvel.

2004, The Butterfly Effect. Ashton Kutcher's attempt to pivot to "serious actor" post That 70's Show. I could not tell you why I picked this movie; perhaps I too wanted to pivot to "serious tween" and this was my way of signaling that to my peers. We go to the slightly bigger, slightly nicer movie theater a few blocks further away. We are given adult sized popcorn and drinks, and get high on sugar and salt while watching a mailbox explode and kill someone (yes, that is literally a scene that happens in this mess of a movie).

2009, Wanted. My senior year, I decided to just have a couple friends over to our apartment to watch a bootleg version of Wanted I had downloaded off Limewire. Once again, could not really tell you what came over me. It had been out for six months; I don't think anyone was talking about it still, but perhaps something around the curving of bullets caught my eye. There are photos from this birthday, pimply high schoolers on the cusp of leveling up to slightly closer to adulting, forever immortalized in facebook photo albums limited to 60 photos each. We later would get a letter from the MPAA (and FBI? maybe?) in the mail warning us about pirating movies, for which I feigned innocence.

Why movies? (Is it because we come to this place for magick?) Perhaps its because there's only so many ice skating rink and bowling alley parties to be thrown, and laser tag in Times Square was expensive. There is something to be said, however, about the touchstone of a piece of media, popping up here and there to remind me of being celebrated, there amongst the flavicol kernels and sticky Milk Dud fingers. Happy birthday, back then, to me.