A Day At The Movies.
Tony Dickson was a poor man without education. He married a woman of the same standing and through the years they were blessed with 9 children which did not make things any easier.Then a distant relative died and left him a few thousand Rand. Not enough to change his life permanently but enough to improve things at home a bit.
After long deliberation he decided to take the whole family to the movies as none of them, himself included, had ever been in the movies. So off they went.
He bought 10 tickets – the latest arrival could still go in for free – and forked out enough to buy a color TV. After a while he returned to the ticket office, clearly agitated. He purchased another 10 tickets.
“And tell that guy at the door”, he said, “If he tears my tickets in half again I’m going to knock his block off.”
I would not have found this as funny as I did, was it not that I remembered how upset I was about the torn tickets the first time I went to the movies with my mom and dad. I must have been about 4 at the time and I troubled my dad about it all the time until he took me out to the toilet and explained the process of access control to me.
Only then I was subdued. I was really scared that they would throw us out because of the torn tickets.
I cannot remember anything about the movie other than the blond leading actress. Could it have been Doris Day or Marilyn Monroe? I don’t know; the man at the door made a much bigger impression on me.
Enjoy what is left of this day.
We had another sunny day. Two in a row!
Comments (51)
I don't think so. I believe they use different colors and you would have to wait a few days before trying to use the same stamp again.
At our age I don't think we go to clubs where you get stamps on the wrist.
I went to Germany when I was 6 weeks old with my Mum and Dad and I can remember having to lay on a 'Camp-bed' during the day at 'Kindergarten', I could only have been 3/4.
Old memories seem to re-emerge with little effort whilst events during the day disappear so quickly.
yea, nostalgia...i always bought tickets for Marilyn Monroe´s movies ... 10 times at least grin: i am sure it was about the story, but they were more chesty as well.. ::laugh:
hope you are well
You brought back memories when you said you set fire to the grass fields behind you. I had a burn barrel in my backyard. There was about 80 acres of grass behind the yard. One Sunday afternoon, I decided to burn some cardboard in the barrel. I forgot to put the screen over the top. A couple of sparks got out and set the grass on fire. I burned the 80 acres.
Needless to say, the fire dept was very unhappy with me and I got fined a couple hundred dollars!
Never a truer thing said. I have to write things down - and still forget about it, but the things of my childhood are engraved in my memory.
Was it all different movies or did you watch the same one several times.
I don't remember what my mother was doing at the time. My younger brother could not walk yet.
I did not come across the matches by accident. It was put kept out of my reach. I planned to get the matches.
I still remember so well standing on a chair getting to the matches and then striking them in the dry grass. The match burned my fingers and I dropped it and when the grass caught fire I spilled the contents of the box trying to put it out. I can still remember the panic as the matches on the ground caught fire.
I cannot remember if I was punished but I do know it was a helluva thing to get the fire out. Everybody in the neighborhood ran with buckets of water to stop it.
Love to hear about all yours memories... takes us on a trip down memory lane
Flying to Ibiza sounds interesting enough without having to lose sleep at 5 am. It would be about enough to cause cardiac arrest. That is my best sleeping time.
Very possible. He represented a real threat to me and seen in the light that the movies in SA at the time was strictly English. A language I only mastered almost 20 years later. Not that it would have mattered. Even if it was in my mother's tongue, the guy at the door had my attention.
Yes, I can recall many snippets out my childhood but have difficulty in getting the sequence right. The only reason why I know this incident was the last of the three I mentioned, is that the other two incidents happened before we relocated to Cape Town while this happened in Cape Town.
How do you feel about that movie? Do you want to watch that movie again? Have you ever wanted to know what had happened in that movie?
I do not have the foggiest notion what it was all about. I phoned my father about an hour ago and he recalls the incident but cannot recall the movie. He recons I was closer to 5 at the time but agrees that it could not have been later than 1957. We were not yet in our new house - that I grew up in - which was completed in November 1957.
Do I wish to see the movie again? I probably have. I spent a lot of time in the movie houses when I was a child and those older movies were regular features.
Ja, it seems to be a problem with our age to forget the recent things. What's the name of that disease again?
I cannot remember the initial task.
Why I asked. It was because when I was very young, I had watched many movies. At that time I only understood visual. But when i grew up, i wanted to watch some movies, of which visual made impact on me.
I did not know the names of those movies, either. I had strong desire to know what had happened on those movies. A year earlier, I happened to find a movie. When I watched, i could not express what i felt. Might be it was heaven.
I'm not a big movie fan and have not been in a cinema for probably 20 years or more but I still watch an old classic B & W from time to time when the opportunity arises. Many times I am surprised how little I understood of it when I was a child. The language was a real problem.
True, the language was the problem. But, we could not understand many aspects because of being a child. Apart from the language, there are cultural, historical, etc. aspects that we might not have any idea. That also makes difference. I was watching sixties movies and had not clue at that time. Even though many movies had less dialogs.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. So many small things in you childhood leave a lasting impression on you. I can now understand how a traumatic experience can scar a child for life.
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You and that men, didn't know what the half ticket means. dang!
Even now that I have mastered the language, very often I don't understand the humor of other cultures and have discovered that my humor is not always appreciated by some cultures. Things we find funny in SA is not funny to them at all.
I was 4 or 5 and it was my first outing to the movies. My father gave the tickets to me to give to the man and there he comes tearing the tickets. Of course I was upset. I mean, how could he? It was OUR tickets and my father paid for them.
In the usa! We share our tickets with the people who work there.
It is called..." Pay it forward! or a random act of kindness "...
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Why does that random acts of kindness sounds like organized crime to me?
Where is that from?
Because it is!.. ...In your mind......
Don't think so. Too many other things on my mind.