The past two weekends, I have watched a movie at a theater. For the past few years, I've averaged two visits to the theater a year. I've already doubled that for 2006. My wife and I saw only one or two movies in the theater when we were dating - I'm just not a fan of paying $5.00 each to see a movie that I'll soon be able to buy at Movie Gallery for $8.00 or less. But I love the theater - the smell of the popcorn, the HUGE screen (especially when I'm sitting in the front) and the sound. So when I am going to be willing to pay that much to see a movie, it's gotta be good.

The day after school started, I saw World Trade Center at Farmington. I'll devote a complete post to 9/11 later. It was a great movie (I cried) and seeing it in the theater made it even more realistic and helped me to empathize with the characters even more.

Then last weekend I had a new experience - going to a drive-in. Now I've been to Sonic hundres of times - it's one of my favorite fast food restaurants - but I had never been to a drive-in theater. We saw The Ant Bully - another good movie. And I even splurged and bought the large popcorn and a large soda (ending my four-year no soda streak). My wife and I agreed that this was a special occasion, and that it was ok to drink soda for a special occasion. But the main reason was that 44 oz of soda was much cheaper than 20 oz of water!

The drive-in is a symbol of our country's heritage. As we pulled in, I couldn't help but think of all the cars that had occupied the parking spaces over the past forty years. Most of the cars there that night were mid-nineties and newer; a few were older; one in particular was an early-seventies model. And I thought . . . no matter how much has changed around the drive-in, it's still the same - they still use the original popcorn popper; the concession stand is still the original building; the white posts dividing the parking spots are still there. All that has changed are the cars, the people, and the movies - all of which come to the drive-in each night to experience a piece of Americana.

I always had a preconceived idea that when you go to the drive-in, you sit in your car, watch the movie, and go home. I had no idea that kids played games in front of the screen while they were waiting for it to get dark. I didn't know that the audience sat outside in lawn chairs and visited with each other. I wasn't aware that everyone just rolled down their windows and tuned their radios to a station and turned it up to hear the movie. It has the feel of a neighborhood. I like that. In a theater, everyone files in - usually in the dark - and sits in their chair, staring at the screen until the movie starts. They sit in the dark and watch the movie, then get up and leave. No one remembers who was sitting next to them, unless they were a nuisance (which reminds me of World Trade Center - there were a few nuisances there.)

Maybe movie-going is a reflection on the way our society has changed. In today's busy life, we rush to the theater, slide into our seats, watch a movie on a huge screen right in front of our eyes, listen to the pristine sourround sound, then get up and hurry out. Or we pull into a parking spot, stretch out the lawn chair, visit the concession stand, speak to the neighbors, watch the kids play, and wait patiently for the sun to set . . . then we watch the movie on a far-away screen, listening to our car stereo (and our neighbor's). And if we're patient enough, we may even see a shooting star.

Do you live life as though it's a theater or a drive-in?