When I was 22, I saw a matinée of Shrek 2 by myself. I felt weird seeing a family movie alone so I sat in the back row hoping no one would notice me and think I was a creep.
The movie starts and I'm still alone in the theater and I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that I won't be judged. But 5 minutes in, this lady in her 40s walks in with 8 or so kids in tow. She doesn't notice me in the back since it's dark and I'm basically right beneath the projection window. So she sits down with her popcorn and the kids start going nuts. Thinking they have the theater to themselves, she doesn't wrangle the children in at all. They're running wild and screaming and jumping over seats and I get the impression she's just happy to sit down.
So the kids go nuts for a good 20 minutes then start to collect around her. One kid though, this 6ish-year-old blind kid, walks up the the back row. He's hopping and stomping down the row until he gets to me and I'm so uncomfortable that I just stare ahead at the screen.
He leans into my face and says "Helloooooooo" and I say "Uh...h-hi." He seems satisfied by this and sits in the seat next to me.
Shit.
So after a minute or so I say "Um...d-dont you wanna go, uh, sit with your...friends or whatever?" He turns and does this cartoonishly exaggerated finger-to-chin thing and looks in the air going "hmmmmmmmmmmm". I have no fucking idea what to do now. So I eventually go "i-i...uh...I think maybe you shou-"
"NO!"
What. The. Fuck.
"B-buddy I just thin-"
"NO NO NO!" he screams.
"No no no", I mumble.
I see the silhouette of the woman 30ft away jerk her head at the sound. I watch as her head scans the seats around her as if she's taking a headcount. She was. And she came up one short.
Feom a sitting position, her rotund frame flips and clears the back of her own seat with the grace of an Olympic pole vaulter. She lumbers up the steps, at inhuman speed as I strongly consider just crying. She runs down the isle and stops a few feet away from us. She slowly bibs her head as her eyes adjust to the dark, daring them to show her what she thinks she sees but when they do, there it is. There I am. A bearded dude in a leather jacket in the back row of a movie theater during a children's movie with a child who is not mine screaming "no".
An E. Honda hundred hand slap commences in the air an inch from my face for a moment before she grabs the kid and bolts. She grabs the other 7 (now vigorously protesting) children and runs out of the theater.
And now I panic. I know what this looks like. And my brain is telling me to relax and that I can explain everything and it'll all be cool and we'll share a laugh about the misunderstanding. Unfortunately, my brain was telling me this as I was bolting out the fire exit and toward my car.
I never went back to that theater, moved shortly after, and - most importantly - never saw a movie alone again.
That being said, my wife is stoked on the Deadpool movie too so I'm not worried.