Member-only story
About Me — Mike Hickman
But which me?
The audience tenses. He’s standing up now. The guy in the fifth row started heckling the staff member who’d come out to explain, for the fifth time, why the film has failed to start. He’s standing up. And he’s in full-on fighting mode. He wants an explanation on behalf of the cinema, its management, and perhaps even the entire film industry. He’s maintaining that they’ve ruined everyone’s evening (the mother in front mumbles something about shouty people ruining the evening for her children). He’s asking — oh, dear God — he’s asking for other people to back him up. To join him as a delegation because — and the tensing becomes cringing, and the cringing becomes hiding behind hands, and the hiding behind hands becomes the seeking out of the nearest available exit — he thinks this should be “taken outside”.
This is what the guy in the fifth row, followed by at least ten others, then does.
Out he goes, marching after the cinema staff member who walks straight on through the lobby and through the nearest door.
Which he then locks.
It’s only later that the guy in the fifth row realizes the poor boy has locked himself in the cleaning cupboard.
It’s only later that the guy in the fifth row realizes that he did stand up and demand the head of the cinema manager…
