The Legend of The Ladies Beth: Vampire Vandalizers, Part the First

My aunt and I crack each other up. We both think the other is hilarious but we seem to be the only person, respectively, who is sophisticated enough to appreciate the other's humor. Or that's what we tell each other and ourselves. We love to share funny stories (it has actually become a running joke that my aunt is always telling me "Remind me to tell you the story about..." And when I do, somehow we end up distracted, unable to backtrack, and the reminder goes unheeded until the next time she thinks to tell me "Remind me to tell you the story about..." and so on.)

I told my aunt about "There's no time!!" and brought her to the inside of the joke. She loved it and decided that we needed was to have an adventure that involved yelling "There's no time!!" and running like maniacs away from some kind of danger. And soon enough, an opportunity presented itself.

Zip Codee Doo Dah

I was visiting my aunt and uncle at their house in Baton Rouge (I was living in New Orleans at the time and she was in the process of selling her Baton Rouge home and remodeling her dream-home, a vintage "dollhouse" in Lafayette.) My cousin Collette had been living in Lafayette attending college (Geaux Cajuns) and my aunt and uncle spent a lot of time driving the hour back and forth between the two cities.

One common trait that has bonded my aunt and I is our shared nocturnal nature. When left to our own devices and without a set schedule, our sleep/wake cycles almost completely flip to the opposite of what's considered "normal" by "employed" people. 

My uncle is one such "employee." Around 10 pm on Friday we decided it was the perfect time to get out of the house and see a movie. I was planning to look up movie times on my smartphone on the way to the local cineplex. My uncle's response when hearing our plan was, "Now?? It's 10 o'clock at night." Normies, I tell you what. Harshing our vampire mellow.

We headed out to the theater and I punched in the zip code my aunt provided to find movie times. I can't remember what movie we were planning to see but it was playing within the next half hour at the nearest theater.

We parked in a space close to the entrance and walked just a few steps to the main doors. There was no one at the ticket window. It seemed odd but we figured they just weren't that busy and we would be able to purchase tickets inside. To our surprise, the doors were locked. My aunt and I looked quizzically at one another. We waved at an employee and he came to the door, unlocked it and stuck his head out.

"Hi, can I help you with something?"

"Um, yes," I replied. "We wanted to...see a movie?"

"I'm sorry ma'am" [This is the South. You're a "ma'am" at any age]

"I'm sorry, but we're closed."

"How can you be closed if you have showings at 10:30?"

"No ma'am. Our last showing was before 9 pm. We don't ever have showings any later than that."

Aunt Mary Beth and I walked back to the car, confused to say the least. Suddenly she started laughing so hard she gave herself a coughing fit. "What?" I asked. She shook her head and waved her hand at me as she continued to cough. When she finally caught her breath she snorted out,

"Elizabeth. I gave you the zip code to the house in Lafayette."

Gong.

We both started cracking up. We hopped back into the car and after some discussion, decided to try the next-closest theater. We got on the interstate while I inputted the correct zip code. The next-closest theater was also done for the night. "Should we try the one off Corporate?" "May as well." Same thing. No movies after 10 pm.

Over the River and Through the Swamp

By this time we were wound up from laughing at our mistake and had already been driving from 20 minutes and were approaching the point where we'd have to either exit the interstate or continue on across the Mississippi River bridge, to the West Bank. I had an idea. I had a wonderful, terrible idea.

"Let's go to Lafayette! We'll surprise Collette; it'll be so much fun. We can sleep on her couches and have a girls day tomorrow."

After a call to Uncle Pat to inform him we were taking his car for the weekend, we drove gleefully, tickled by our sponteneity.

Remember how we said Collette would be sooo excited to see us? Well, it turns out that 21 year old college students with handsome boyfriends and fun-loving sorority sisters usually have plans on a Friday night, and those plans don't include your mom and your weird cousin showing up unannounced and crashing your pre-game. Collette revised her plans so that we could stay at the house and she could not have to hang out with us. I don't blame her one bit. However, she should have known that leaving the two of us alone, high on our own self-congratulations, might lead to us getting into some trouble. Bwahahaha.

To be continued...