The Obsessed Stranger Lady couldn’t get me off her mind.  My very existence took away from her day.

 The next day, three films had gone by with only myself and one other faithful soul, the Innocent Movie-Goer (the daytime films are not well attended) in the theater.  Before the next film, I asked the Innocent Movie-Goer if it would take away from his film enjoyment if I went up into the back corner and opened my laptop?  “Of course not,” he said, a little worried now that the person asking such a bizarre question was in the dark theater with him.  Now, this time I wasn’t going to be so easily caught.  I went up to the top row of seats (huge theater….dozens of rows…big empty space….nobody…just me and the “okay, sure” guy.)  But, just to please the “Obsessed Stranger Lady,” I decided to forego even sitting in the seats.    

 I sat on the floor behind the rows in a little nook to the side of the projection booth. I turned with my back to the screen, just in case Obsessive Stranger Lady peeked in again, spotted me, and called the state police.

A few minutes later I hear the now familiar approaching steps.  Oh, yes.  The Obsessive Stranger Lady hovered over me and again asked me what I was doing.  I answered as factually as I could, sprinkling in apologies for disturbing the imaginary audience.  I was a little scared at the this point, kind of like the story where a person is tried for a crime and the jury comes back with this verdict, “We find the woman innocent.  But we think she should be locked up anyway.”

The Obsessed Stranger Lady let me in on the world she was responding to, turning away and saying.  “I just think there’s something wrong with a person who’d come into a theater and open their laptop.”

Well, okay.  At least she didn’t make that little call to the film police.

We all have an Obsessed Stranger Lady inside us and she’s a real bore.  But, ah-ha there’s a cure!  Later.