We’ve all been there. Sitting in the movie theater with your seventh–grade girlfriend with the arm bar down between your seats, watching Scott Pilgrim vs. The World in silence. Complete silence. No one remembers their movie dates fondly. And we millennials, with our streaming and pirating, have only made it worse, adding the awkward opportunity to sit next to each other and try to pick out the ideal movie to not actually watch. From friskiness in the movie theater to glorious third–wheeling, we talked to the freshmen still very close to the horrors of high school to hear about their worst movie dates.
The Painfully Relatable:
Benner Rawley (College '19):
“I took this girl out to the movies in high school to see Grown Ups 2. Her interest in seeing that movie should have been a warning sign. Unsurprisingly, we were the only two people in the theater. As I prepared to make my move, I put my arm around the back of her chair. In that moment, she reclined, trapping my arm. I let out a gasp of pain that went unnoticed. Several minutes went by with my arm in that position, then she turned to me and told me she had to go. She got up and left, and I was left alone in that theater nursing my arm.”
Belle Carlson (College '19):
“The first date with my freshman year boyfriend was a double date with his best friend. We had plans but no transportation, so the four of us piled into my mum's car to drive down. On the way down the hill, my boyfriend’s friend’s girlfriend’s parents called and we listened to them yell at each other, so my mum had to drive her home. But my boyfriend's friend still wanted to see the movie, so she dropped the three of us off at the movie theatre. After, my boyfriend wanted to make out, so we went to our high school's football field, and his friend sat and waited for us in the bleachers.”
The Ugly:
Sofia Price (College '19):
"This one time I was Netflix and chilling and five minutes into the movie this guy set an alarm for like an hour for when we should stop watching and hookup."
The Romantic:
Ha Tran (College '19):
"I went to the movie theaters with a guy I was dating last year. We thought we were alone in the theater, so we got a little handsy, but the guy working the projector yelled at us to stop. We left."
Guess love isn’t dead after all.
*Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.
