Popcorn for days...

Who doesn't love going to the movies, especially during the summer!? And the smell of that salty, buttery, delicious snack...popcorn.
So who was luckier than me, the end of my senior year I was hired as a concession worker at The Movies. The manager, Mr. Dawson, and I are actually still friends! Our girls went to the same daycare and now preschool.
The Movies:  That was the name, we had to answer the phone like this..."Thank you for calling Cinemark, The Movies, the best seat in town, how may I help you?"
The problem with this lovely sounding address to callers was that our seats were the absolute worst.  I'm not kidding. No matter what seat you sat in they squeeked, smelled, were itchy and sometimes customers fell out of them.  This could be a problem.
I spent my first several months scrubbing kettles, cleaning butter pumps, upselling CocaCola products, slinging candy bars and pickles. And on Thursday nights I would stay late with the crew after closing time to preview the next week's movies. Usually getting home around 3 am.
Then in the Fall, I went on to Harding, a Christian college in Arkansas, for school. My first year there was amazing and sad at the same time. I had a boyfriend from my hometown that went with me, he was actually a year ahead. The most annoying part was everyone said I followed him there, but in reality I had been accepted to Harding before that guy even had ever heard of the place. He ended up being an ex boyfriend. I don't need to say much more about him, but I can say after I broke up with him he tried to make my life  at Harding very difficult... anyway.
Every break I would return to the theater at home and everything fell into its natural routine.  The summer after my first year at Harding we had a new Manager at The Movies, Mr. Walker. He asked if I had thought of being an assistant manager, I explained my leaving for college, he said no problem, and the training began. I loved it! I got to count money, thread movies in the projector, and no more scrubbing the kettle(except that one time someone didn't show up and I closed concession.) I went back to school and I missed our Thursday nights. We counted all inventory, bags, cups, candy, jalapeños, pickles, and bottled water. Remember Thursday night is the time we stayed up late to preview the upcoming shows.  So what was a lonely, heartbroken, single girl to do on a  Thursday night thousands of miles from home!? You know I called down to the theater and talked to the other managers every Thursday, interrupting their count and catching up on the gossip and movie theater.   Then, one Thursday Mr Walker explained he was being transferred closer to his home, some many states away, and the new manager was a lady, but she didn't last long and I only worked with her on one break. Then she was replaced by Mr. Phillips, my last manager at The Movies.
I went back to The Movies, the summer of 2005, as I always had. The difference was I had decided not to return to Harding, my boyfriend at the time (now Husband) was here at home and I decided to transfer to Fresno State, easy right?  No. Since I had been out of state several of my courses didn't transfer so I actually attended a junior college for a while, once I had my associate degree transferring was much easier.  In the midst of all of this change, December 2005, The Movies was closing. The owner of the building wanted to increase the rent and corporate was like no way that place doesn't even make enough money for all that. So corporate closed us down. The funny thing is that greedy building owner ended up with no one paying him rent at that location, ever again.  You can still drive by the old theater, vacant and boarded up all these years later.
A building full of memories,
The last night we had to send Cinemark any of their property so we were working on tearing it all down, boxing it up, and then one of the other managers pulled out the cards and we played Texas hold 'em, my first and last time playing, (until a few months ago at a charity event, in which I was pretty good, I guess I'm a good bluffer and make smart bets, but then I got up to the big table and I was in over my head so I went all in and lost it all, but that's another story).  That guy Conrad, is still my friend today, great man with a lovely wife and beautiful adopted children. He and his wife even came to my wedding, 2 years after the theater closed down.

I miss the old crew, the seemingly Simple days, and being 21.