In Which I Want the Drive-In Back

We ducked under blankets in the van, hoping the 16 year-old ticket booth attendants remained dubious. 

We felt the van stopping and going, until it lurched to a stop.  My friend, Alyssa, spoke. She bought a ticket. We heard the squawk of a walky-talky. The attendant must of waved my friend on, because we felt the inertia of the car moving again. The air got damp underneath the blanket—our breath creating heat and steam. 

We stopped, and my friends and I unfurled our blankets off of us. I saw the headlights barely showing from the cars around us. The sun was setting. A white canvas in front of us showed a hot dog doing flips around a coke bottle—an homage to 1950s advertisements for the concession stand. 

We had successfully snuck into the drive-in, on the last night of the season—some September dusk. 

We started setting up—cautiously glancing around, hoping no one would ask to see our tickets.  The blankets were arranged. Snacks were set around the sides of the van. We found our hidden Starbucks Pumpkin Spice lattes (the drink that all the cool kids were drinking, of course), and waited for the movie to start. 

I leered anxiously, as my legs swung back and forth, hanging off the end of the trunk. I had never snuck into a movie before, and peer pressure had prompted me to do what I had just done. I was a dangerously good girl, and this was my last summer hurrah. 

My friends and I all had college classes staring soon, or jobs to rush off to, or you know, grown-up things that we half-embraced. But, that night, was a summer night, and as our jokester friends came up in their car, and we laughed with glee as they set and landed perfectly aimed jokes in our direction, I felt so happy.

It was mysterious and playful, and our futures of marriage and kids and jobs and responsibilities lay before us like dreams, instead of realities. 

And, it was fun. 

But, where’s the fun now?

Grown-up fun looks a lot like talking, and at 31, I’m a fan of talking to my dear friends. I like looking at their faces and hearing their opinions, but I’m missing something. I don’t want to just tell my friends what I am doing—like some sort of elevator pitch on how successful I am. I want some rip-roaring fun.

I want my friend, Ben, at a waterpark, making us run to every ride we could, because the park was about to close, and we have to get our money’s worth, right? We held the tubes over our heads and Ben yelled at us to hurry the heck up, because we had to do the dinosaur ride one more time. 

But, that was a long time ago, and today I’m home, on a Saturday, not feeling sorry for myself—for I have friends, and I have long coffee dates with them at parks while their children play. There’s connection and being seen—but nobody sets and lands a joke in my direction, you know? I haven’t been made fun of, in some affectionate banter in such a long time. 

We’re just all so terribly practical, and I miss whimsical fun. And, I’m trying to rearrange my schedule—hoping I can figure out some possible way that I can reintroduce the drive-in into my life.

My friend, Alyssa, who helped me sneak into the drive-in some ten years ago just wrote to me about an 18 year old who is living in their basement,

“…last week she and her friends were out every night doing whatever. And, it makes me miss it.”

See, we haven’t forgotten. Some wisp of what we once were is still floating about in our memories.

And, I have been trying to figure out if it’s just a season that is gone. We can’t all just jump in a car and go to the drive-in without plans. We don’t have hours on end in the evenings to do nothing. Maybe, we’ve grown up, and that way of life is gone. Maybe, friendship looks different. Maybe, it looks like talking at a barbecue, while the kids run around haphazard and crazy. Maybe, it’s conversations about a “starter house,” and preschools, and getting that client to sign another deal. 

I don’t know how to get the drive-in back. I think we ALL don’t know how to get the drive-in back. 

But I want it back.