Only in the Movies

As I write this, my husband and I are on Staycation. And during our Staycations (back when we first took them, they didn’t have a name—so we called them “We’re too broke to go away againcations”) we watch movies. Lots of them.  And one thing we’ve realized that there are many things done only in the world of cinema.

Like eating Chinese food, for instance. Sure, we eat Chinese food—but not in the movie way. 

In the movies, people eat Chinese food directly from the carton, and they always use chopsticks. And they always use them quite proficiently, I might add. No chow mien spilled all down the front of their shirts, nosirreebob.

I always wonder where they get their Chinese food.  When we get ours, the entrée, the rice, and the sauces are all in separate containers. We dump them out on plates, and mix them together.  So either they’re not eating any rice or sauce or they never got any.  

Perhaps they simply can’t pick up the rice with those chopsticks. Have you ever tried this? I have, and if I had to eat all my food with chopsticks, I’d be starved in a day, wearing a shirt covered in sweet and sour chicken.

There’s more than just the eating of Chinese food that bugs me on the silver screen. I’m amazed at the action scenes in which 20 guys are all shooting off automatic weapons, and no one gets killed. We can see how close they got, though, because luckily for us the bullets keep hitting metallic things like dumpsters or cars that cause sparks to fly all over the place.

When we see the sparks, we know to say, “Whew…that was a close one.”

If I were caught in a fray like that, I’d come home looking like Swiss cheese. Unless, of course, I could find a convenient dumpster to hide behind.

Speaking of action films, they are also filled with car chases—exciting ones that take us screaming through the streets. What I love, are the ones in which a guy is driving the car and successfully misses hitting the woman with the baby carriage, the small child on a bike, the old lady crossing the street with a boy scout’s help, even other cars. Yet, because he’s driving like a nut, 50 cars suddenly crash into each other right after his car has safely made it down the block.

Hmmmm…they never tell us if those cars hit the baby carriage woman, child with bike, and old lady.  But I digress…

Besides action movies, I like films about baseball. But I have one question: how come in all the baseball movies where kids play, they have a fat kid as the catcher? Think about it. I mean Babe Ruth was a bit portly, but did the Yankees automatically make him a catcher? No. Yet, the kid with the weight problem is firmly planted behind home plate for the duration of each game to make witty quips to the batters to try to throw them off the mark.

I think this is because in movieland “fat kid” somehow equals comedy. I say let the overweight kid be the pitcher and accidentally hit the “big, tall kid” on the other team. You know that the biggest, tallest kid on the other team usually gets hit to provide some laughs. Or when the kid is pitching, the batter could hit a pop-up, and the overweight kid and a couple of other fielders could do the famous “smacking into one another” in an attempt to catch the ball. They do that all the time.

Why oh why must the big boy always be the catcher?

I’ll stop my lamenting soon. Though I do have one last complaint. Make that two. In the movies, when kids grow up as best friends, they usually live right next door to one another.  Now, I know this can happen in the real world. But c’mon—all the time?!

I also know that it sets up cutesy scenes, like two kids talking to each other in the bedroom windows on cans connected by string or on walkie-talkies.

I grew up in the city, where friends nearby were plentiful.  Still, my closest friends—Julie, Jym, and Sandy—all lived a block or two away.

And if we wanted to talk to each other—we picked up the phone like normal people!

My last pet peeve about the movies (for now, at least) is how no matter how long someone is leaving home—whether it’s for a couple of days or forever—they carry with them only one small bag.

One small bag.

I spent a weekend in Chicago and had two bags, one of which was large enough for me to smuggle small children in.  And if I had driven there, rather than flown, I would have had even more.

Guess I’ll never make it in the movies.  That’s okay; at least I’ll always have all my stuff.

Michele “Wojo” Wojciechowski, when she’s not watching movies and criticizing the daylights out of them, writes “Wojo’s World®” from Baltimore. She’s also the author of the award-winning humor book Next Time I Move, They’ll Carry Me Out in a Box. You can connect with Wojo on Facebook or on Twitter.

Did you know that Wojo has a newsletter? It’s full of fun stories, facts, and contests. And she won’t spam you because she doesn’t know how, and it’s bad Karma. Email her at Wojo@WojosWorld.com to subscribe.