A Long Time Ago

I have been standing outside theaters on the sidewalk, waiting to get inside, for forty years. 1977 was a very different time. Home video was still a quarter inch away from being a reality. If you wanted to see a movie without commercials, you went to the local theater: great big beasts with big sound and screens to match. Before these movie palaces were chopped into concrete bunkers to allow many more shows on many more screens, there was that need to be in one of two lines: ticket buyers and ticket holders. The idea that you could just walk up to the box office, buy a ticket and walk in at a time of your choosing was ludicrous. You had to pay.
And pay I did, along with my family and friends. I stood in lines that wrapped around the building, waiting for the last crowd to clear out so we could go inside and find our seats in that hastily cleaned theater. One of us would stake out a place in the line, while the others would rush off to buy tickets to become certified Ticket Holders. There were times that this exchange happened at such a furious pace that I was met with my tickets just moments before the usher reached out to take them from my hand to tear them in half.
Made it. Now the time I spent making small talk with those around me drifted away and the full gravity of the event of seeing the curtain go up and the lights go down fell on me. I felt that way again last Thursday night. Sure, there were some changes. The tickets had been purchased a week in advance from an online service, and there were two theaters the same building showing The Last Jedi. The big theater was half an hour earlier, in 3D. An enhancement and an expense I could do without, since the screen upstairs was still far larger than the one in my living room. Arriving an hour before showtime, we were still standing around the corner from the marquee. How many rabid fans were in front of us? Dozens? Hundreds? I relaxed a little when I rationalized that there would be a seat for us. We had assured that by buying tickets ahead of time. Where they would be was still a source of mild anxiety.
That abated somewhat after a young couple came and stood behind us. I thanked them for taking away that last-in-line stigma, and we struck up an easy nerd-centric discussion about our time spent in line. These were recent college graduates who remembered seeing Episode IV: A New Hope for the first time on VHS. By that time, there was a numbering system. There were trilogies. Prequels. I became a little wistful while recounting all the lines in which I had stood for the chance to be the first to see the new Star Wars. Among the first. Back in 1977, I spent the summer and the following autumn going to see Star Wars because that was how long a movie theater could show a film. Months passed and the lines diminished. I memorized all the dialogue, but I still kept going. As each new episode appeared, I found myself out there on the sidewalk. Waiting. The words "wait for video" had no meaning back then.
Or now.