The Time I Got Put in a Headlock at the Movie Theater After Watching "Magic Mike XXL"

Like many women in America, last week I loaded up a in a car full of suburban moms and went to my local movie theater to cheer and whistle at a screen featuring the projected images of several half-naked (okay, mostly-naked) men, aka Magic Mike XXL.

I thought the trickiest part of my night would be trying to explain to my kids what a movie called “Magic Mike” is about. “Is he magic?” … “Does he do magic?” … “Oh, I like dancing! What kind of dancing?”

As it turned out, the explanation for my children was easy compared to explaining to my husband why I returning home wearing a soaking wet shirt.

I didn’t spill my drink on me during the grand finale dance number while the theater erupted into cheers and cat calls. We weren’t inspired to start our own wet t-shirt contest. No. The truth is, I got caught in the line of fire when my friend threw a glass of water on a strange women so she would release me from a headlock.

Let me back up a bit and start from the beginning.

To protect their identities, I’m giving my friends code names which correspond with the roles they played that night:

Adira: Because a baby naming tool I Googled tells me it means “brave & strong”.

Splash: Because of her water-throwing, super hero power.

StreetSmart: Because at the first sign of trouble she takes out her earrings & assumes the ready position.

Lucky: Because she had the sense to situate herself far away from drama.

I will also give code names to our rival gang, waiting to mess us up in the parking lot.

Narci: The narcissistic – angry, loud-mouthed, hot mess of the group.

Minion: The friend who both defends, yet seems scared of Narci.

Culpable: Don’t remember her instigating anything but still guilty of being Narci’s echo.

The five ladies in our party were all seated and watching the previews when a group of three women arrived late and started getting settled next to us. They were loud and kind of rowdy but it was Magic Mike after all, and the movie hadn’t started yet so we didn’t worry too much about it, yet.

We were seated as such.

An important note about this particular theater is that you can order from a full menu of drinks and food items throughout the movie using a handy ‘order card’ ordering system. (A.MA.ZING!) The theater also encourages moviegoers to use this same ‘order card’ system to discreetly notify them if someone is breaking their zero-tolerance policy for talking or texting during the movie.

During the first half of the movie, there was the normal (okay, maybe not normal, but expected) amount of clapping, shout-outs, whistles and WOOO HOOOOs coming from the audience. Again, it was Magic Mike XXL , not The Piano.

Unfortunately, our new neighbors decided to also help fill in the less exciting lulls in the movie with their own commentary and completely unrelated, full volume conversations. You know what I mean. You’ve been there. We all have.

So you start by looking around looking for any kind of look of shared annoyance by other moviegoers in your shared radius. You give each other the wide-eyed, head shake of disbelief which says, “why do I always choose the seats next to the loudmouths?”

And you wait… and use your best yoga-class focus, trying to drown out their chatter… and you concentrate on the movie while simultaneously willing them to shut up through the pure power of your mind.

But they don’t shut up.

They just get louder and more “Look at me instead of this movie – I’m infinitely more interesting – just ask me, I’ll tell you all about it AT FULL VOLUME DURING A MOVIE!”

And now you can’t even pretend to concentrate on the movie because your brain has entered the non-stop rehearsal of scenarios about how you can politely ask them to be quiet without causing some weird movie-neighbor tension for the next 50 minutes.

All these thoughts go through your head: Should I say anything? Maybe if I give them five more minutes they’ll wear themselves out. Should I passive aggressively put up the little “noise complaint” food order flag or should I just try to ask them, person to person?

We’re all grown ups here, right?

Fortunately, Adira, who was sitting sitting closest to Narci and her enabling posse had enough and politely asked if they could please keep it down.

Let’s all take a moment together to think of some normal, adult responses to this request:

• “Sorry. Naked, oiled up men make me lose my mind. We’ll try to keep it down.”
• “Sorry, we didn’t realize the song we’re singing ended over a minute ago.”
• “C’mon we’re just having fun – My friends keep telling me how much they love hearing me curse with my British accent, so I assumed everyone must like it!”

The response I did NOT expect was a full-out, verbal assault on Adira.

“YOU STUPID, F*CKING BITCH! IT’S F*CKING MAGIC MIKE! YOU’RE AT THE MOVIES, NOT SOME FANCY PLAY! WHAT A F*CKING C—!”

Now mentally play that loop on repeat for a minute straight. Full volume.

We started looking around. Were we being punked? Did someone just want to see what a bunch of PTA moms would do in an uncomfortable, curse-filled situation? This couldn’t really be happening.

But it was.

Since the human-to-human approach did not work, Adira grabbed her order card and scribbled down “Noisy neighbor” and put it in the holder for the waiter. Obviously, our new neighbors knew she wasn’t placing a food order with that card.

Suddenly Minion was not so tough anymore and started in with a new apologetic tone, over Narci’s continued rant. “Noooooo, please don’t, c’mon, don’t do that. We’ll stop… what can we do?”

“I told you, just be quiet,” said Adira, calmly but firmly.

And that’s when the real excitement started.

Narci got up out of her seat, stood in front of Adira and started screaming in her face.

“YOU F*CKING BITCH! YOU F*CKING C—! WHAT IS YOUR F*CKING PROBLEM?!”

For at least a full minute, which felt like forever, she stood there in the middle of the movie theater, screaming, arms waving about and at one time even thrusting her hips in my friend’s face inviting her to “lick her —-”. She also screamed a few things about interrupting her orgasm or perhaps asking if she was interrupting ours. It’s hard to keep track of all the crazy when it’s coming at you like a loud, drunk firehose.

When she had hit her daily quota for screaming “f*ck you, c— bitch” at a complete stranger, she finally went back to her seat, at which point Adira went and hand delivered her “noisy neighbor” note to one of the waiters who had not been in the theater during this display.

The waiter sent someone in to monitor the situation, but like little kids who know they’re being observed, they were on their best behavior while being watched. In the end, it worked out since we finally got to hear the rest of the movie while they were doing their best impersonation of normal people.

As the final credits rolled, our row remained as we waited for our server to return with our credit cards and bills to sign. The past thirty minutes had been relatively uneventful, so I was under the delusion that the drama was over. Once we paid, we grabbed our things and started to exit.

Lucky, Splash and StreetSmart made it to the stairs okay, but as Adira walked past the group, the yelling, cursing and name calling started all over again.

As I walked by shaking my head, they started shouting at me how “she (Adira) had started it”. I had had enough and turned and said, “No, she really didn’t and this neighborhood is too small to go around acting like this.” (In the past week I have come up with about a hundred more bad-ass responses than this, but I figured I better not edit history to try to sound cooler than I really am.)

*I continued walking past and then felt a hard shove against my back. Narci had stood up and started pushing me and Adira towards the stairs as she continued cursing at no one in particular.

The events after this became a little unclear, partly because things happened so quickly, but mostly because it’s hard to keep track of things while you’re in a headlock. Yes, Narci took the next logical step in any noise dispute and grabbed me around the neck with her arm and put me in a headlock, shoving me toward the wall. Fortunately, at some point, Splash threw the contents of a glass of water at Narci which made her arm slippery so I could slide out of her grip clearly explaining the wet t-shirt part of my story.

While this was going on, someone had grabbed the manager, who then joined us in witnessing the final few minutes of Narci’s “F*ck off” tirade before being escorted from the building. He stayed with us to make sure we were okay and even went so far as to offer to walk us to our car or treat us to a round of drinks at their restaurant.

We waited almost 20 minutes before finally deciding to take the manager up on his offer and ordered a round of drinks (which we barely touched since we were all too busy glancing at every person and car that went by, ensuring that they had not returned.)

As we sat down, Adira looked at me and asked, “If I would have told you a few hours ago that we were going out for a fun movie and at the end some strange woman is going to put you in a headlock, would you have believed me?”

No way. I still have a hard time believing it happened.

I’m also having a hard time deciding what the lesson is from this experience.

I tell my daughter all the time to stand up and speak up for herself. But what happens if the person you stand up to is a Narci who is completely irrational? Would we have been better off just letting her go on ruining the movie for everyone? Is it worth the risk of getting hurt? Will I speak up the next time this happens?

I honestly don’t know. I’m starting to think that people who are selfish and clueless enough to act like this in the first place, generally don’t respond well to being corrected.

What I do know, and what I will tell my daughter is that there will always be “Narci’s” in life. And when choosing your friends, she should choose wisely. I did.

Susanne Kerns was a Senior Account Director at an advertising agency working for two of the top brands in the world. Nine years ago she traded in her corporate life for life as a stay at home mom, raising two of the best kids ever. She started her blog, The Dusty Parachute as a way to dust off her online advertising skills and begin her job search. Instead, she uses it as a way to spend lots of time on the computer so her kids think that mommy has a job. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.