Movie FAIL

Dennis was feeling a little better today: not great, but well enough to get out of the house.  A couple of days ago, the kids finally filled the House Cup, a little wine glass that I chuck jewels into whenever the kids seem to need a little positive reinforcement for cleaning their rooms or eating their healthy food or getting along.  I'd told them that we could go and see a movie when they filled it: a major treat, considering the cost of movie tickets.

When I was small, my mom would give my sister and me a similar treat for good behavior over the summer.  She'd drop us off at the dollar theater with a total of $4 and two heavy sacks of candy from Mr. Bulky's: some of the happiest rainy days of my life.

But here, it costs about $100 to take our family of five to the movies, and that's before popcorn.  Gasp.

On a related note, Dennis was looking at an infograph about the distribution of millionaires across the world. Switzerland has the third-highest concentration of millionaire households in the world: over 8%.  We're not among them. But we still felt like taking our kids to the movies. And we've sort of gotten used to the fact that we'll be paying twice the American cost of anything we buy.

We decided that, if the kids were going to be sitting in a theater for a couple of hours, we really should get them out and into the sunshine this morning.  Looking sadly at my diminished bowl of the World's Best Cherries, we decided to go back to the farm this morning, to see if there was any chance that they had anything left.  We packed up four scooters and a stroller, and raced to the bus, and then to the farm.  Ella and Alex were feeling independent and raced ahead, running across a field that looked fallow but had actually just been planted with beans. So we got a due scolding, making us all kind of grumpy.  And, although they did have cherries left, the two kilos I bought were more on the sour side.  Hmph.  So maybe the trip was a little ill-fated.

Dennis split off on the way home to get pick up some groceries and medicine.  I tried so hard to get him something from the Apothecary yesterday, using everything I learned in Chapter 2 of my Berlitz Language book. Halsschmerzen! Kopfschmerzen! I was all over it! I explained all of Dennis's symptoms to the pharmacist, and she listened solemnly and questioned me, and then regarded the shelves.  I was pretty excited to see what she came up with: a little part of my mind hoped that maybe they have something different and better here in Switzerland than I can find on the shelves of Target.  Maybe something that wasn't quite FDA-approved, that would instantly, mercilessly, kill all those sore-throat germs.

She handed me a little bottle of throat spray and a little box of pills, explaining carefully that Dennis was to take one pill three times a day, and that it would help him considerably.  So I left the shop with my wonder drug, feeling pretty proud of myself, until I actually looked at the label and realized that I'd just bought a very expensive little box of ibuprofen. Dennis wasn't impressed.

So he went and tried himself, and came back with some cough drops.  Literally.  He has a little bottle of cough suppressant liquid that he's supposed to shake out, thirty drops at a time.  Everything's a little bit different.

The kids were all excited to go to a 2:30 matinee of Kung Fu Panda, and they bounced up and down as I tucked some chocolate bars in my purse.  This was gonna be good.  But when we got to the theater, and went to lay down our money, the man looked askance. "Aber sie sind zu klein!" They are too small!

He explained that here's a rule here, in all theaters, that moviegoers must be at least 6 years old.  I suppose if people are going to lay out $20 for a movie ticket, they don't want any chance of their movie experience being interrupted by crying, squirmy kids.

But I'm a little incredulous: the Swiss insist that four-year-olds are old enough walk to school alone, but they're not to be trusted in a movie theater? Actually, of my three kids, I'd actually vote eight-year-old Ella as the most likely to talk loudly (she's not really a whisperer, especially when she's excited about a plot point) or to cry (she sobs loudly during the sad parts, like the last thirty minutes of Toy Story 3. Ugh).

Whatever: my kids were crushed.

I'll have to ask around, to see if G-rated movies are treated differently.  Maybe we can try again with Cars 2 comes out.  I can tell you with all certainty, there's no risk of any of my children making a single peep during that movie.

Anyway, Plan B.  Dennis and Joey had a nap, Alex made super-secret forts, and Ella made a pretty book out of the meadow flowers that she's been pressing. And, at dinner time, we pulled out the pizza and microwave popcorn and a Wallace and Gromit video that Aunt Stephanie sent. (Thank you!!)

Honestly, the kid were probably just as happy.