Our Tuesday Weekends

The worst thing about retirement is the loss of weekends. Some insist that when we retire all we have are weekends but I have learned differently. Let’s face it, it’s the work week that makes the weekends special. It’s that feeling that you get late Friday afternoon when it appears that another work week with its challenges, risks, rewards, politics and frustrations has been completed. We’re off the clock and ready to rock.
Now that I no longer have a work week to complete, Friday afternoon loses most of its appeal. It’s just another day when I didn’t have to get up or prepare lesson plans or be responsible for anything other than my own irresponsible self which I’ve discovered is a full time job with zero time off.
If I had to pick a day that every day resembles in retirement, it’s Tuesdays…a long string of Tuesdays. Many of we retirees have discovered that Tuesdays have become our new weekends; so what do we do? We go to the movies like we did when we were kids on Saturday. The difference is we’re seeing more adult movies than I Was A Teenage Werewolf or The Creature With The Atom Brain or It Came from Beneath the Sea or The Giant Gila Monster or The Killer Shrews or Ol Yeller or Lady and the Tramp etc.
We used to line up for those matinees every Saturday and the lines were long. I was always amazed how when I first got to the theater and took my place in line, it seemed as if the wait would be forever. After a few minutes, I’d notice that the number of people waiting behind me was longer than the line waiting in front of me. The lines moved quickly. We were all about the same age with the same hyper active angst.
When we finally got to the ticket counter, we slapped down our 35 cents. We walked right in and made our way to the concession stand for popcorn or milk duds.
Nowadays, the lines still form for our Tuesday matinees. The lines are shorter but the wait is longer. Nobody’s using cash anymore and everybody has some kind of discount card with bonuses that need to be verified. Usually there’s at least one person who has a complicated transaction that puzzles the ticket taker and takes awhile to figure out while everybody in line tries to be patient while noticing that the line behind us is getting longer while we wait which means that even though we’re going nowhere, we’re making progress which sort of sums up the experience of retirement.
Then when we get our ticket we have options of what kind of listening aid is available for us to use. Then we have to pick out our seat in advance. Picking out the seat is a way to prevent people from sneaking in or sliding from one theater to the next like we used to do in the old days. The theatre makes its profits from the concession stand so as long as we bought something from the stand we figured we could slide.
We’re too old to slide nowadays not only because we have more money but also because we’re not gonna be able to sit through two features.
I recently saw 1917 on a Tuesday and the place was packed. All of us were around the same age. It took us quite awhile to get into the theater but because there were so many trailers, we had plenty of time.
We don’t show up for anything Marvel, that’s for the kids.
The kids don’t show up for much except Marvel and when they show it’s on the weekends and since our weekends don’t exist anymore we don’t have to worry about kids, even though we know that they’re allright.
Another factor in the line is the number of movies playing at the plex we are attending as well as the staggered time for each showing. In the old days, you had movie showing with unstaggered times. Now all of that has to be negotiated at the window while the line waits. Even though I have a Masters degree, I doubt if I could handle the job of ticket taker. I’d be spending most of my shift saying, “What?’
We’re keeping film alive. We get out and go to the movies. We’re not pirates stealing movies.
We’re law abiding gray hairs enjoying our Tuesday weekend.
We earned it.