What happened to the ticket booths at the movie theater? You know, the ones where you pay your money to a cashier and get your ticket? You tell the person behind the window you want to see Such-and-Such movie. And you know the ticket-seller thinks you’re waaay younger than you are, but ‘looks can be deceiving’ and you insist you get the senior discount just the same? What happened to those ticket booth persons?

I didn’t see a ticket booth anywhere last night when entering the movie theater. Instead a bank of computers, lit up in colorful futuristic lights, called out to moviegoers. It appears, you not only tell the computer what movie you want, but where you want to sit. You stick a debit card in the machine and a ticket comes out with very faint lettering notifying of your seat number and row.

Popcorn humor.

Don’t even think about stopping at the concession counter. A box of popcorn will set you back eight bucks. Or was it eighty bucks? It was expensive, I remember that. Who knows what a whole tub of popcorn costs? Actually, who would want to know? You know it’s not pleasant whatever it is.

Inside the packed theater where the movie is held, it’s dark except for the dimly-lit stairway. You have no idea where your seat is as the seats aren’t marked for normal people. Rather, the seats are marked for people with ESP, those special people who can sense the location of their seats. If you don’t have ESP, but still have the great fortune of finding your seat, “aha, here it is,” someone holding a box of $8 popcorn and a skyscraper-sized cup full of soda will tell you with indignation, “You’re in my seat.”

Oh, I thought this was D2. So where is D2?

When you ask a movie theater employee to help you find your seat, which is D2, other people in the theater will shush you loudly as they’re trying to watch the important pre-movie commercials. The movie theater employee will find your seat for you and will inform the person plopped in D2 that she needs to move. To prove his point, the movie employee will shine his flashlight on your ticket so the offender can see no one’s making this up. Of course, the squatter/intruder shoots annoying glances at you. She doesn’t move. A stand-off ensues. The movie begins. The husband of the interloper tries a last-ditch effort to keep D2 for his wife. He says she has a disability. She needs the seat for medical purposes. You wonder how the seat is medically helpful to her? Maybe the air in her location contains less pollutants, than say two rows back. The movie theater employee doesn’t back down. She must move anyway, he says. The intruder gets up and storms off without any apparent disability in her mobility.

If these new changes at the movies aren’t enough, restaurants have also made a mess of normal life. What happened to going out for a hamburger after the movie at a restaurant intended for humans only? Nowadays, you go to a restaurant and it’s “pet-friendly.” You order your food and your pet’s food at the same time.

Should you ask your server, tongue in cheek, if you can bring your cat to the restaurant, your server, named Britney, tells you she hasn’t seen a cat at the restaurant. She adds that someone brought in their service pig once. Service pig?

At least this dog appears to have manners and some fashion sense.

I’m not ready for this new world. I don’t want to eat with pigs or dogs. I like dogs, Even pigs. I just don’t care to watch them snort and slobber over their Barkley Burger as I eat my Lemon Chicken. And, I don’t want to go to the movies and stumble around in the dark trying to find my seat and then confront a person occupying my seat as if they own it. This kind of set-up can cause much chaos and confusion. Not to mention violence, which could be on the agenda if certain people don’t get out of a designated seat.

All this to say, the world is going nuts. The other day I drove by an elementary school when the children were getting out of class to go home. One girl hopped her bright red hover board and without looking up from her phone, scooted down the sidewalk. She acted like this is how we go home from school these days. Stare at your phone while riding a two-wheeled, self-propelled board putt-putting along the sidewalk.

I tell you. It’s a new world out there and I’m not ready for it.

**The picture at the top of this blog  features real-life survivors of a computerized movie theater and its nearby pig and dog-friendly restaurant.

survivors include, (l-r) Me, Kathy, Phyllis, and Julie.

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