The Movie

From the Haunted Wordsmith is the Opposites Attract Challenge #25. Click the link and play along or do the opposite and see if you find it attractive.

The prompt: For this challenge, I provide one word and a list of its antonyms. The challenge is to use the prompt word AND one (or more) of its antonyms in some form of writing (or creative work).
Today’s word: intense
Antonyms: light, moderate, soft

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The Movie

Man, let me tell you, the movie was intense. I’ll tell my friends on Monday morning all about it but I’ll bet you right now that none of them will believe me. Any takers?

It took me some time to get into the movie. And of course it didn’t help that I was nervous through the first half hour of the thing and couldn’t really concentrate, but then things started to lighten up. After all, I kept telling myself, it’s only a movie, right? It’s only a movie.

Finally, after that first half hour my breathing and pulse started to moderate and I was feeling more like myself. Not that feeling like myself is anything near what you might call “normal”, but it was OK for me. I waited another half hour just to be sure everything was OK and then I did it, I slid my hand over and put it top of Jeanine’s hand. And you know what? You’re probably like my friends and won’t believe it either, but she didn’t pull her hand away! She didn’t scream and she didn’t yell, “What are you doing?!” and she didn’t get up and run away. No, and this is the best part: she turned her hand over so we were palm-to-palm and our fingers – sort of like magic, I guess – interlocked. Then she looked over at me and smiled. Can you believe it?

Seriously, can you believe it?

And I’ll tell you, I couldn’t believe how soft her hand felt.

It’s amazing how holding her hand made me feel and I pretty much lost track of anything that happened in the movie after that so don’t ask me to review it or ask me if recommend it or anything because I can’t, so if you’re wondering about that you’ll just have to go see it. But I’ll tell you that I was more or less sort of bored with the movie up to that point anyway so it’s not a big deal. It wasn’t a movie I would have picked but when I asked her on Thursday after English class if she wanted to go to a movie with me on Saturday night I guess I made the mistake of telling her to go ahead and pick the movie.

Or maybe, thinking back to how soft her hand felt, that wasn’t a mistake? I’ll have to think about that some.

When the movie ended Jeanine turned halfway in her seat so she was facing me and she told me how much she liked the movie and you know what? She didn’t let go of my hand. She was really excited so apparently this was some movie she really wanted to see, which was good, and as she talked I noticed that her voice went up the more excited she became and when that happened, when her voice went up, she would squeeze my hand harder. She could have talked like that with her voice rising all night as far as I was concerned. In my entire life my hand has never felt better than it did at 9:35 pm last night. We might have stayed in those seats – her talking and getting excited about what she was talking about, and me listening and smiling and trying to remember to blink – if the usher hadn’t told us we had to leave.

Walking through the parking lot to the car we continued to hold hands and I was happy that it still felt so good. And I was happy that Jeanine was still talking because I was guessing that meant she was happy and that something must have felt good to her too. Maybe she felt about holding my hand the same way I felt about hers? Thinking about that made me feel good in a way I’d never really felt before although I had to be careful with thinking about that because my thinking was sort of drowning out what Jeanine was saying so I told myself I’d think about all this later when I got home so I could pay attention to what she was saying in case she ever slowed down from talking and asked a question that I’d have to answer.

When we go to her house I asked her if she wanted to go to a movie with me again sometime and she said yes. The guys won’t believe that on Monday either. You probably don’t either for all I know. To be honest, I can barely believe it and I was there. I asked her if maybe next Saturday would be good and she said yes to that too. Pretty amazing, huh? I told her I’d see her in school on Monday and she said, “OK”, and she went inside her house and I drove home where I thought about everything that happened and I started to think about next Saturday. I thought maybe I’d pick the movie this time but then decided that it might be a good idea to let Jeanine pick it again because if that was all it took to make her so happy and excited then that has to be the thing to do.

I’ll have to remember to ask dad about using the car again next Saturday but that shouldn’t be a problem. And I’ll have to figure out what to wear, or to at least be sure I don’t wear the same thing again. I wonder if instead of going to the movie theater she’d maybe like to go to the drive in?

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