One of the best things included in your pricy college tuition is the opportunity to make new friends. If you’re lucky, you take a certain class where you become friends with everybody. For me, that was a beginner’s Japanese course, where I made a few especially close friends. We’ll call them M, K and T.
Naturally, I was ecstatic to make good friends because I moved from Virginia to Texas to attend college. So I suggested we go see the new movie As Above, So Below (2014), since we all shared an interest in scary movies.
M drove us in her charming silver truck to the nearby movie theater, rustic and old-fashioned. There weren’t many cars in the parking lot, which was even better in this situation—it would have been obscene if a lot of people saw what happened.
M, K and T bought popcorn, but I decided to live on the wild side and get some nachos. The classic cardboard holder contained tortilla chips in a clear plastic bag and cheese in a sealed cup. It looked innocent enough. We collected our snacks and headed off to the theater.
The first half of the movie was great. I hadn’t seen a good scary movie in God-knows-how-long. It was realistic, I liked the documentary-style filming and the protagonist was fearless and admirable. I was entwined in the effects and plot and endured a ton of jump-scares. Meanwhile I shoveled nachos into my mouth in a fashion that would probably be really unattractive in reasonable lighting, but weird things happen in movie theater darkness.
The nachos were delicious—the cheese was a little spicier than I’m used to (in a good way) but it paired amazingly with my Coca-Cola Icee. I was having a pretty good time and T was making great commentary throughout the movie. But fifteen minutes after I finished my nachos, something started a-brewin’ in the pits of me tummy.
At first I shrugged it off because I wanted to be a (wo?)man about it. Slowly, I became less engaged in the movie and started realizing: my stomach actually really hurt. I toughed it out for another twenty minutes but after the movie’s climax, I decided to investigate this matter further in the restroom.
I stood and the room spun. I staggered out to the aisle calling behind me “Oh yeah, I’m totally fine,” when I fell to my knees just out of eyeshot of my friends. My stomach muscles tensed with the mental command of “Don’t you dare,” but my body YOLO’d it and purged the contents of my stomach. It was horrendous. I probably looked like I was being exorcised during those moments.
Looking around and (perhaps unreasonably) expecting some help, I realized that nobody even noticed. I stumbled out to the food counter and fell against it. The employees didn’t even react.
I explained that their nachos were made of demon cheese and dove across the counter to expel the establishment of the malevolent snack. To my dismay, the food started reforming into a disfigured creature…
Actually, the employees just gave me a lot of water and sent someone to clean up my puke. I didn’t even know what to tell my friends—especially since I couldn’t get some puke off of my cardigan—and ended up missing the last twenty minutes of the movie where everything wrapped up. I left my cardigan behind. I didn’t want to get the smell in M’s nice truck.
When you go to a new movie theater, especially one run by a bunch of college students, don’t take the risk. Just get popcorn.
