My fiancee Debby cringes when I approach the popcorn counter at a movie theater. It’s one of my favorite foods, theater buttered popcorn, and the accompanied cup of cola. A movie isn’t a movie unless I have both in my hands sitting in the dark.

Until recently. My attitude’s changed. I’ve come to rely less and less on movies promising to be captioned. No longer do I want to sit in theaters munching on my popcorn, slurping my cola only to learn the film’s not captioned. It just doesn’t feel right eating those stuff when there isn’t a captioned movie showing.

That was the case yesterday. The gentleman who sold our tickets assured my friend and I that he himself checked the DTS machine earlier. I was elated that I was hearing this from the very person who checked it. Still, I walked past the popcorn counter not giving the treats a thought. As much as I wanted to believe them, I could not find it in me to fully convince myself the film was indeed captioned.

We sat through the usual proceeding: the quizzes, advertisements, curtain drawing, previews, and finally the opening credits. The film begins.

Mouths move. No captions.

We stepped out of the theater obviously in disgust. The theater manager was a kind gentleman, empathizing with us. He gave us his apology explaining that the theater next door was showing a screening, and had taken most of their staff. (I live in an area of 9 movie theaters within a 2 mile radius where almost all have one auditorium each. The theater I was in is under the same management as the theater next door).

The kind manager offered us three complimentary tickets each. Whoop-dee-do!

As well-intentioned as his offer was, I’ve grown tired of spending up to a hour in a theater all for nothing. In fact, I had entered the theater on a free ticket I had received from a previous, and similar, incident.

What good are complimentary tickets if you cannot use them? What at first seemed to be winning lottery tickets, are now worthless. I wonder how many more times for this to happen before I stop going to theaters altogether?

The first person that emails me their mailing address gets three free tickets to Mann Theaters.***

***Note: The movie tickets have been awarded. Thank you for your readership.