That day was really hideous as far as I remember. Constant problems with sales and the post office and miserable people who feel the need to make others miserable as well, that kind of thing. Stress times five. So after such a poopy day I decided some “me” time was in order and headed to the theater for a little matinee happiness. I thought, hey, Monday afternoon, great time, always quiet, always nice. Not so, preciousss. Every single parental unit in the Greater El Paso metropolitan area with children under 4 brought not only said children, but their dog Skippy, baby's favie widdle battery-powered talking teddy, plus the entire extended family who just HAD to show up for a flick on MY MONDAY MATINEE TIME!!!!

     So, she started during the previews which of course I ignored. She kept going through the opening music, which I still ignored. Then she got louder during the opening Smeagol/Deagol scene. Her little friends kept shushing her to no avail. Finally, I asked her very nicely to please be a little quieter. She apologized sincerely and actually did quiet down for a while. Ah, sweet moments of bliss. You could tell she didn’t want to be obnoxious, she was just deaf. I think I mean that physiologically too. Stone deaf.

     The real kicker is that she was just so very very enthusiastic about the movie. All of her extremely loud and unnecessary comments were merely expressions of sheer joy at seeing the movie for the first time. Yup, you heard me right. It was her first viewing and I don’t think she heard one snippet of dialogue during the entire 3 & 1/2 hours. But boy, did she love Love LOVE the flick though. And she SHARED her opinions with everyone in the theater. She screamed, she guffawed, she gasped in horror. She bounced up and down, she hid her eyes in the scary scenes, she grabbed anything within reach during tense moments (and this included me on more than one occasion.) She shouted both general and specific directional commands to each and every character that dared grace the screen--no matter how important or secondary they were to the plot. I think Frodo looked at her quizzically at one moment near Orodruin. I KNOW Legolas actually tried to impale her with an arrow during the battle of the Pelennor Fields. Sounds incredible, but I’m telling ya, this kid had better vocal projection than a third-rate wannabe chorus girl in a sad little off-broadway production of Oklahoma. She could BLOW and all of Middle Earth, Valinor, and parts of California were privy to her demonstrations! (I swear it was literally a DVD audio commentary in its proportions--except no one in any dimension or plane of existence would ever ever want to listen).

     And still, after my first intervention, I didn’t say anything else to her. I mean, whaddayagonnado?Apparently, people must have expected me to bear the responsibility of reprimanding her because they started giving me death glares from Hades, but by then my brain was so fogged over and exhausted from trying to block her out that I didn’t process the looks until later on. According to my sister, there was another girl about the same age on her right who was fiercely unhappy with my little chatty Cathy. Tricia (my sister) said that she finally started replying to the retarded comments with snarky little jibes of her own. Tricia said she was very clever. Tricia was amused. Tricia says we musn’t judge all young girls by the actions of one. Tricia is very wise...but then she didn’t have to sit by HER all day.

     So, the only thing that she said which actually pissed me off (and I do mean pissed me off) was her comment during Theoden’s death scene. Yes, she did indeed have the cajones to speak then. Just when Theoden is farewelling Eowyn and most normal people are dangerously close to tears, this little gem of childhood shouts “Hurry up, nobody cares!” This was met with several boos of disapproval and I must have glared the death glare hard enough to crack obsidian because she whimpered a bit and shut the hell up for an entire 3 minutes total. Ah, sweet long-forgotten bliss.

     But the worst, and I mean the absolutely unforgivable sin, had to have been the fact that during the gut-twisting, angst-wrenching, heart-ripping final struggle between Gollum and Frodo, which is vast and heavy in its implications......during that terrible climactic moment near the end of all things, little miss-advertisement- for-birth-control starts laughing manically. Giggling, shrilly and loudly. All I could do was look on aghast, numb with mortification, while people behind me booed, hissed, and threw things at her. I know this because I benefited from some of the projectiles. (Someone threw a new & still-wrapped piece of Juicy Fruit).

     Finally, after five total “Is that the end?” queries from her (she never learned) the movie ended. This kid turns to me and very sweetly and demurely says “I’m sorry if I was too loud or anything.” I couldn’t reply. I mumbled something like mmmhaahmm.. or something and begged caffeine off my sister. By the time we got to the car I actually had a headache (and never have headaches). The thing is, I can’t get her voice out of my head. It keeps calling to me, calling. I don’t think I will ever be rid of it now. There are some pains that can never fully heal.

     So now that I’m much more intimately familiar with the wonders of Excedrin and have sworn off children entirely, or at least plan to send them to boarding school at the age of 10, I will leave you now with this simple lesson. The moral of the story is:

     There’s a little Gollum in all of us Smeagols and the only thing it takes to bring him to the surface is one afternoon locked in close proximity to a foghorn-voiced, sugar-highed, pre-pubescent, non-book fangirl.

The line is very thin, my preciousss. Oh yes, very thin the line isssss.......