A Criminal Parent on Saturday Night

I am breaking the law as I write this. I am sitting in the cafe area of the local movie theater while my son and his friends are watching an R-rated movie. They are going to see it without being 17 or accompanied by an adult. I am a criminal genius.

But why should I have to sit through an R-rated movie with kids? They don't need me to explain any of the crass humor or the raunchy dialog. They've seen just about everything on YouTube except porn. It's way too late for censorship. Am I supposed to play Church Lady or throw my hands across their eyes? These movies are made for male teens and twenty-somethings.

This particular movie is "Johnny Knoxville's Bad Grampa", one of those awful boy movies with plenty of crotch-kicking and breast baring. Also, farts, burps and lots of micturation and defecation in really inappropriate places. There is probably a playful pedophile and at least one incident with a bad ass biker gang too. And at least 1,000 utterances of the "f" word. I'm sure I would prefer a root canal to seeing it. Maybe I'd give up an eye... definitely a finger.

When I bought the four tickets-kids tickets--the sanctimonious theater manager sternly informed me that I would have to sit with them boys, in the theater with them during the entire movie. I nodded and thought to myself "yeah, right".

A friend had gotten her boys into The Purge, another terrible R-rated movie, by simply announcing to the teenaged ticket taker that she was giving permission for them to see it. I was pretty sure this wasn't going to work on a Saturday night and I was right. My Plan B was to find some likely guy headed in that direction and convince him to claim temporary guardianship.

The boys seemed unnerved by this plan at first. "I'm not sure I appreciate being fobbed off on some stranger. Why don't you just watch the movie? You don't have to sit with us." (Mercifully, I can't remember which one of the boys actually used the verb "to fob" --probably mine)

And then god smiled or at least James the teenage ticket taker did. He told us that his friend Andrew was coming to see the movie and that he'd probably be okay with claiming the boys as his own for 92 minutes. James not only smiled, he seemed almost gleeful to have figured out a way to outsmart his manager. He described his manager sotto voce as a "complete asshole" (I didn't tell him this was old news) Andrew came along not two minutes later and off they went to kill a few brain cells without drugs, alcohol or Grand Theft Auto 5.

The best part is that I am not in the theater sitting next to them.

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