Nina and Alvin, on Movies

Let me introduce you to Nina and Alvin. Nina, who is 73 and Alvin, who is 83 have been married for 53 years. I have known them for 52 of them.
Nina and Alvin are not their real names but when I told them I was going to write a few stories about them, they requested aliases.
“Please call us Nina and Alvin.”
Nina and Alvin, it is.

Nina and Alvin have certain criteria when it comes to seeing movies. They will only see movies that start no earlier than 3:45 and no later than 5:15. If you don’t believe me, check their ticket stubs. There is a strict 90-minute-window in which they begin their cinematic experience.

You can invite them to see A Star is Born at 3:30 at Regal Cinema 16, but Nina will then inform you that it’s playing at 4:15 at Jann’s Marketplace.

Enjoy your 4:15 showing.

Equally as important as the time of the movie is the location of the seats in the theater. If you think you can just willy-nilly pick a seat anywhere, you are sadly mistaken. Nina and Alvin only sit in the last row, in the second and third seats from the aisle. Except for the first 20 minutes of the film, in which Alvin will be sitting directly in front of Nina.

Why would Alvin do this?

That’s what I wanted to know.

It was a few years back and I had met my parents for a 4:30 showing of A Man Called Ove. Walking into the theater, I spotted my mom, who was already sitting in her self-assigned seat. I took the seat next to her. “Where’s Dad?” I asked.

“Hi honey,” my dad said, turning around. He was sitting in the chair directly in front of my mom.

The lights dimmed, he returned his gaze to the screen and the previews began.

Hmm, this is interesting.

After about the fifth preview, when I realized that I was not going to get an explanation, I whispered to my mom, “Why isn’t Dad sitting with us?”

“Oh, he will, but for right now, we are just making sure nobody sits in front of us,” she said. “We don’t want anybody blocking our view.”

I scanned the theatre. Besides us, there was just one elderly couple in the second row. Their tiny silver heads were barely visible.

“You mean those thugs?” I asked.

“Exactly,” Nina answered.

Another thing that Nina and Alvin have strict guidelines about is popcorn. If you accompany them to the movie and casually remark, “Hey, maybe we should get some popcorn,”

Nina will respond, “No, no, no, no, no, no.” If Nina is emphatic about something there will be multiple “nos.”

No explanation.

Just “No”, and then five more “nos.”

It doesn’t matter if you offer to pay the answer will always be “No.”

And it’s not like they don’t like popcorn. They have a big bag of popcorn in their pantry right now. I’m not lying, you can check.

But I guess it’s the movie popcorn they’re violently opposed to. They literally won’t eat one delicious buttery kernel.

“Do you want some?” I offered the bag to my mom.

“No, no, no, no, no, no,” she said.

“Dad?” I said.

He turned around, “No thank you.”

Do they both suffer from some deep seeded childhood movie popcorn trauma?

With Nina and Alvin, you never know.

You’d think with how particular Nina and Alvin are about seat selection and movie popcorn repression, they would be equally picky when choosing their movies.

You would be wrong.

A couple years back, they decided to see the movie, Sausage Party.

“You do realize it’s not a documentary on Jimmy Dean?” I asked.

“Oh, we know,” Nina said.

“And you are aware that the target audience for this movie is 17-year-old boys?” I added.

“Excellent,” Alvin replied.

So they went, they saw, they critiqued.

“It was a bit disturbing,” Nina admitted.

“We didn’t realize the sausages would be animated,” Alvin said.

As opposed to real-life human sausages?

Regardless, Nina and Alvin continue to see every movie ever made. Last week they saw The Lego Movie, yesterday they watched Roma, and next week, one can only guess. Perhaps Sausage Party 2.