Wow, what a fun job to have, reviewing new movies that just came out……going to the movies every week with your father to see the newest and exciting new films…westerns, musicals, romantic drama.
Can you imagine a little kid describing his adventures at the movies during show and tell? Many kids could not tell the class what their fathers’ jobs were…we would say that our fathers left the house in the morning with some kind of a bag full of stuff…maybe papers, strange looking metal “gizmos”, or their lunches.
Wait a minute, my father left in the morning with a large black bag that contained some familiar objects like a stethoscope, something that had a magnifying glass on it, and a thermometer.
Well, as a famous newscaster would say daily, “but here is the backstory”. First, my father was a doctor, and we lived in upstate New York. We had a telephone with a party line…simply, we shared a telephone line with strangers and had to wait for someone to get off before we could make a call. Finally, we got our own private phone line. What a pleasure not having to wait to call, or receive a call, but we had one slight issue……..our new phone number was one digit different than the local movie theatre in town.
We started to get calls from people asking about what was playing that week and the times of the movies. When I was growing up, the movies changed weekly, and they were double features. In the beginning, my father answered the phone politely saying wrong number. This could happen six and seven times a day. Finally, my father solved the problem…. he loved going to the movies, and went every week. It’s a small town so let’s be helpful, and neighborly!
Instead of saying to the caller, wrong number, he started to give them the times of the movies, the names of the movies and his own critique. He would tell the caller not to bother staying for the second movie as it was slow, too silly, or too “mushy”. After a while, people realized that they were calling the Doctor, instead of the movie theatre but still asked for his opinion. Finally, the movie theatre “had enough” of this amateur and totally changed their phone number.
Here is the “kicker”. Even after the phone numbers were changed and the callers stopped calling, his patients, after their physical examination, would then ask, “Doc, what is your take on the new John Wayne movie….is it worth seeing?” I’m sure, my Dad would also have enjoyed being an usher. He was a man who loved his fellow beings and always wanted to help.
Take it for what it is……it’s just as I see it.
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