We all know them. They are the source of the squealing noise in the line at the theatre, the reason movie merchandising sells, and why you hear the same movie song over and over again on the radio. I also suspect that they are the reason why none of the hit men I’ve sent out to kill Justin Bieber have come back alive!!!
Why do I hate them so much? Well sadly, yours truly had the misfortune of sitting next to one in a movie recently. Why did I go a movie which attracts fan girls, you ask? (If you didn’t ask, simply assume the mask of an intelligent reader and put on a curious face, will you??) Well, let’s just say it involved a map to Inca treasure, a resourceful writer, and a friend with evidence to blackmail me with!!
Anyway, I digress. Sadly I was seated next to a representative of this strange and uninteresting race. It started out quite simple – ‘ooohs’ and ‘ahhs’ when the protagonist appeared on screen (name withheld to protect the once lightning-marked head) – but things quickly went downhill.
Like a werewolf slowly changing form under the full moon, so did the fan girl under the influence of sweetie-poo hero (her words, not mine) – from the extra long ‘awwws’ at the hero’s first kiss (in this movie, at least) to the extra shrieks at moments of suspense. I have never been jealous of the hearing-impaired, but I was on this day because, sadly, the movie also came with the wannabe director’s cut in the form of comments from the fan girl side of the hall.
However, the pain was not limited to my ears alone. The price not to become a cinema hall killer was paid in blood -yes, blood. When the monster appeared on screen, it was my arm that was gripped by her panic-induced talons, and when celluloid tragedy struck, it also struck my shirt sleeve in the form of teardrops and boogers.
But fortunately all bad things must come to an end, and after one and a half hours of what I call my application for sainthood, I was introduced to the said fan girl’s better half who gave me the all-knowing smile of a fellow victim in Vietnam.
Next time, I’m just downloading the movie off the web.
