Popcorn butter. That’s the ending. Just know that going in.
The year was 1994. I was nine years old, approximately three weeks from turning
ten, which felt enormously significant at the time. My brother Jed was eight. Don
Bluth had just released Thumbelina and I was beyond excited in the way that only a
nine-year-old girl in 1994 could be excited about a tiny, animated princess who lived
in a flower.
Mom drove us up to the valley to see it. This was an event.
Now. My mom has to sit in the back of every movie theater. She will tell you why at
length. Nobody needs to know why. Just sit where you want to sit and move on.
I sat with mom in the back because I did not want to sit next to strangers. I was
nine. I am now forty-two. Some things do not change.
Jed sat up front because Jed was eight and fearless and wanted the full Thumbelina
experience unobstructed by maternal supervision.
This was a mistake.
Midway through the movie a man appeared at our row and asked my mom if she
had a little boy. Blonde. Responds to Jed.
She said yes. What’s wrong.
He’s stuck.
Stuck in what.
The armrest.
I need you to understand the movie theater armrest situation of 1994. Current
armrests have a cupholder with a little x at the bottom to hold your cup in place. In
1994 that x did not exist. In 1994 that cupholder was just a hole. A hole that went
straight down into the armrest cavity. A hole that was, apparently, exactly the right
size for an eight year old boy to shove his arm into up to approximately his
shoulder.
Which is what Jed did.
They stopped the movie. They called the fire department. There was a brief period
where sawing off the armrest was being discussed as a legitimate solution.
What actually worked was popcorn butter.
Someone had the presence of mind to apply movie theater popcorn butter to my
brother’s arm and slide him out like a stuck cork and that was that. Crisis resolved.
Arm liberated. Fire department stood down.
The movie resumed.
Here is what I cannot explain. We stayed.
Jed had just been extracted from a piece of furniture by emergency services with
the help of concession stand supplies. A reasonable family goes home at this point.
A reasonable family processes the trauma, gets some air, maybe gets ice cream,
calls it a day.
We watched the rest of Thumbelina.
I don’t know if it was for me. I don’t know if Jed didn’t want to leave. I don’t know if
mom was just committed to the outing at that point. What I know is that we stayed
and watched Don Bluth’s critically panned box office failure to its conclusion and
Jed had to sit with us for the rest of it.
Which brings me to the part that has lived in my brain for thirty years.
Jed started putting his hand back in the armrest.
Not all the way. Just. Starting. The same hole. The same arm. The same curiosity
that got him into this situation in the first place completely undiminished by the
fire department, the popcorn butter, or any of the preceding events.
Mom smacked his arm. Didn’t you just get stuck in there. Stop putting your hand in
there.
And then we watched the rest of the movie.
I don’t know if that incident had anything to do with movie theaters eventually
putting the little x at the bottom of the cupholder. I don’t know if somewhere in a
boardroom someone said we need to address the arm situation and Jed was the
reason why.
But I like to think he had a hand in that decision.
He usually does.
Not bad for a Tuesday.