Put a Cork in it Junior!

It's 1:00 am. It's obvious I am not getting any sleep tonight. My daughter has a cold and hasn't stopped coughing since she got into bed a 10:00 pm. My husband is snoring and a police siren just killed any hope I had of falling back to sleep. What the hell - I got in an hour of shut-eye. I feel a rant coming on. A few hours before all of this started, Emma and I decided to take in a movie. (before all the coughing began) She wanted to see I Love you Man, but when we got to the theater, there was some sort of technical glitch preventing them from running the film. OK, let's implement Plan B. We both agreed upon the movie Earth. There has been a fair amount of hype surrounding this Disney flick, and I do enjoy a well-done nature program, so we got our tickets and popcorn and settled in to watch. This being a new release, there was barely a seat left in the house by the time the movie started. We were nice and early and got primo seats right near the top and in the centre. I noticed there were quite a few very young children in the audience and had a vague uneasy feeling, but dismissed my intuition. Never a good idea. Just as the movie started, so did Yappy and Yappier right behind us. In a very stern motherly fashion, I turned around after about 5 minutes of the annoying chatter and shushed them. When I turned to do this, I did not see any adults near them, but I hadn't looked that carefully and it was dark. (why weren't their parents telling them to be quiet?) My shushing lasted all of 3 minutes before the 7 year old brat channeling his own mini James Earl Jones started to narrate for us and the rest of the movie going public around him. Again, I shushed. Now I was getting really annoyed. The shushing lasted about 2 minutes this time. It then occurred to me that this movie Earth was seemingly identical to the BBC Video version of the Planet Earth series that I had bought for my husband for Christmas. (obviously some well-intentioned Santa had given it to this kid too - as he felt compelled to keep telling everyone he had the DVD). Had Disney just bought the footage and thrown it on the big screen replacing David Attenborough's voice with James Earl Jone's baritone narration? Now I was feeling not only annoyed by Yacky Doodle behind me, but also somewhat ripped off. I mean, isn't the point of seeing a film in theatres a bit moot when it's already out on video? It was becoming apparent that Sponge Bob Talky Pants was never going to give us a moment's peace. By now, everyone around us, kept looking to me to discipline this little spawn of Satan. C'mon people, where's your "it takes a village spirit"? Why did I have to do all the dirty work? And again, where the hell were these kid's parents? If they were around, they never uttered a sound. Guess they had either dumped the little rug rats while they went to see another flick, or they just did not want to admit to owning the monsters. By now, Emma was asking if we could leave. We were half an hour in by now and some crazy part of me still held out hope that these ill-bred children would shut-up, run out of steam, choke on their popcorn - something like that. I would give them one more good shushing - that oughta do it. Well, respect for adult authority just wasn't a part of their vocabulary. The incessant banter continued and I knew I would have to leave before I grabbed the yackier of the two and hauled him out by his ear to the manager's office. As I have no real interest in being arrested for child abuse, I took the high road and took myself to the manager's office and asked for a refund. Besides, as it turns out, I can watch the damn movie in the comfort of my own home without the pip-squeak voice-over. And that, is yet another reason I love golf.