Adam Oster, Novelist

It has been over a year and a half since the last time I stepped foot into a movie theater. There were a few times I was in the building, in order to buy takeaway popcorn while they were almost completely shut down and trying to raise a little bit of money, but the actual experience of sitting in those chairs, staring up at the big screen, eagerly awaiting the previews to start while crunching down on popcorn before the kids steal the rest of the bag from me, the absolute immersion into the moment of a movie…I miss that.

Yeah, we put up a projector in the basement and set up some rather okay surround sound to give ourselves a basic set up for watching films on a big screen at home, and yeah, we’ve done a few outdoor movies on the projector screen as well, and overall have been able to watch most of the recent releases that have been important to us, but it’s really not the same.

For whatever reason, when watching a movie at home, I don’t feel as concerned about running off to the bathroom quick, or heading to the kitchen to get a snack, or talking with my family about what’s going on on the screen. But when I’m in the theater, I’m locked in that seat for the next ~2 hours, unless the little one gets bored and pretends he needs to pee so he can do something that’s not in the room for a minute.

I’ve been really craving that movie experience lately, and, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure why I haven’t gone. My kids actually went to a number of movies this summer as the local theater has a summer kids movie program, and their grandma took them almost weekly to see whatever cheap movies they had on display. Obviously, I’m not entirely against the concept of being in a dark room with other people. We’ve even gone to see a few shows at the local children’s theatre. I just haven’t gone to see a movie in a theater.

And the only reason I can come up with is that it already was something we did fairly rarely. We’d go see the biggest of movies and that was about it. And even then, we were usually a week or two late on those. And so when everything shut down for a year, this was simply one of those items that never quite made it back into the routine.

I’ve been noticing a lot of little things like this lately. Things like going out to eat. We’ve definitely eaten out in a few restaurants, but more often than not, we bring the food home and eat it here, something we used to only do for pizza.

Even our chosen activities are still primarily outside, as opposed to indoor ones like going to the local trampoline park.

This isn’t to say there isn’t a part of us that is still being cautious, because we are. We’re still looking at those case counts and knowing that our younger two are unvaccinated, and we’re wanting to try to do at least a little bit to keep things slightly safer for our family. But the other piece of it is just that this whole pandemic thing really modified our whole routine. And I’m not sure we’ll ever actually get it back.

Although, I’m really hoping to get the travel part of it back soon.