Oh dear, we're not in highschool anymore

When we were in highschool, we had this concept of 'movie nights'. All of us would gather together with our sleeping bags for a slumber party, rent a bunch of movies, make numerous batches of brownies, popcorn and noodles, and watch movie-after-movie in succession all night. More than anything, it was a communal activity, and I have very fond memories of those evenings, even with some of the crappiest movies. The point was the togetherness and intimacy of it all.

So Ilajna and I were very excited as we suggested to Azdadoobie the other day that the three of us hold a movie night. "What's 'movie night'?" Azdadoobie ventured, and Ilajna and I, biased by our rose-tinted memories, gushed about how it was just SO much fun and how it was the best thing ever. So we all booked it in our diaries, emailed each other repeated reminders of our Friday night 'date', and generally hyped the event far beyond what it merited.

When Friday evening finally came about, I was the first one home and busied myself putting dinner on the stove per usual. I must confess, I broke the movie-night code of conduct by making stir-fried tofu for dinner. When Azdadoobie and Ilajna got home, they eyed the dish dubiously. "I don't think you're supposed to make wholesome food on 'movie night'," Ilajna commented, "I think its supposed to be chocolates and popcorn." Nonetheless, we cracked open a bottle of wine and sat down to a very civilised dinner.

Shortly after, we schlepped over to Blockbusters and engaged in an hour of suggesting-debating-arguing-vetoing until finally, at the end of our collective tether, we settled on Life Aquatic. Got home, made ourselves steaming mugs of coffee, loaded the DVD, clambered onto Azdadoobie's bed and snuggled into our blankets to watch the film.

And to its credit, the movie was pretty darned funny. At least the first half an hour, which is all I remember before I drifted off to sleep. "Wake up!" Azdadoobie nudged me, "movie night isn't fun if you go to sleep!!". I jolted awake with a disoriented 'huh?' and watched another ten minutes of the movie before drifting off again.

Periodically, I awoke to giggle to another five minutes of the film before falling asleep again. At one point, I was woken up by Azdadoobie's incredulous exclamation: "Man! You guys are such losers!!". I turned over to glance at Ilajna, only to find that in her corner of the bed, she too was fast asleep. Azdadoobie rolled her eyes, "so this is movie night huh".
"Sssh," I mumbled, "some of us are trying to sleep".

We used to make it through movie nights with four movies in a row! What happened to the Ficali of those days? I refuse to believe it's me getting older. I'm going to blame it on the stress of the week gone by.