3 people, 3 lunches, 3 movies

It is only recently, as the Gs get older that I have started to have meaningful exposure to the youth of today. I was astonished--on a trip with the BG to Canada's Wonderland in 2008--to watch throngs of teens waiting in line for the roller coaster staring at their phones, rather than interacting with the friends who had accompanied them to the park.

Since then, there has been lots of research on the topic, and I recently enjoyed a review of Alone Together, although I have not added it to my reading list just yet (but they do have a copy at the library, so I may, if I can ever get through Fish Into Wine). Plus, I live with it every day, as the family sits in the living room staring at their laptops, doing things far more interesting than talking to one another, but desiring, nonetheless, to do it in the proximity of loved ones (with the exception of the OG, of course, who spends all of her time in the fortress of solitude).

So yesterday, we drew another card from the deck of semi-sharing. We decided to go to the movies, and, rather than agree on a film (which I'm not sure we could have done) we confirmed that our local multiplex had reasonably contemporaneous showings of the three movies we wanted to see. So after bespoke lunches from the Food Court (sushi for the BG, burger for the OG, abstention for me) we went to see The Campaign, Sparkle and Diary of a Wimpy Kid 3.

The reactions to all three were muted at best. The OG really wanted to love Sparkle, but there wasn't as much Motown, nor of Whitney Houston, as she'd hoped; the BG pronounced the Wimpy Kid movie, OK, better than the first, but had nothing more to add to her review; I thought the Campaign was funny in parts, but too many of the scenes did not strike me as plausible within the parameters of the script, and that made it a little hard to take.

Nevertheless, it was a nice moment of togetherness, our lunch and movie outing, despite the fact that we all went our own ways. Or perhaps because of it. We stopped at Target on the way home to pick up new lunchboxes, and the reality that the school year starts on Monday is beginning to set in.