Killing Time

If I were to design the perfect basketball tournament schedule my daughter’s team would play everyday at 3:00, would win and would play again at 3:00 the next day. That would give them enough time to get up, eat, do something fun, warm up, play, celebrate, eat again, do something fun and get a good night’s sleep. Sadly this is not how it goes.
For the last two days we have had late games. That means eating schedules are crazy. There is a lot of waiting around to get to play and then it is very late to eat dinner and then do anything fun. For parents it is even worse because we have time to kill, but still need to be available to do what our daughter needs us to do.
Today Carter and the team went downtown to the market in Charleston. Russ and I stayed at the hotel so he could work. Then she wanted to have lunch with us, but she really needed a nap. I had hours to kill so I decided to go to the movies since I was dying to see La La Land.  
Unfortunately it was only playing at a theater that was far off so I had quite a drive. It seemed as if every other old person in the Charleston area was also interested in seeing a 2:20 showing and the movie was full as could be. I ended up moving seats to make room for a couple to sit together next to me.  
The movie was wonderful and sweet and I only felt like falling asleep for a moment in the middle which is a real feat for me. I sat silently between two older women through the whole movie. We never spoke, or even looked at each other, but as soon as the movie was over the one on my left turned to me and not her husband and said in the most gushing way “That was wonderful, don’t you think?” I agreed with her. She and her husband got up and walked out one end of our aisle. I stoop up and the woman on the other side of me, whom I had not spoken to since I moved for her to sit there said, “That was so great. I hope Debbie Reynolds saw it before she died.” It was a strange thing for her to say to me since I did not know her, but I felt it too.
I did not want that good movie feeling to end, but it did quickly because when I got in the car I texted with Russ and discovered he had not made the connection to get a ride to the basketball tournament so I had to drive back to the hotel a long way and get him and drive back past the theatre a long way to watch the game.
The girls lost a hard fraught match against a team of… well I won’t say more. It was late and we rushed to dinner before the team went off to go on a ghost tour, the fun part of the day that had to wait until very late to enjoy.  
The tournament part of the day may be trying, but the movie part was great. I especially liked the nice people I sat with. Apparently a 2:20 movie in the middle of the week draws a polite crowd.