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Whenever I go to the movies these days it takes me at least five minutes just to select a seat. Here in the front? There in the back? Somewhere in the middle? No – usually I end up on the extreme left-wing (how appropriate) with a view of the screen that can best be described as marginal.

Why? Popcorn. That’s why.

You see – and call me old-fashioned, call me a dinosaur – when I go to the movies, I have but one thing in mind. Watching the movie. Listening to the steady mastication of four hundred teenagers whose creaking jaws drown out the dramatic silences on screen isn’t my idea of fun. The stench of ‘butter-substitute’ that pervades the air turns my stomach. The mechanical movement of the hand from bucket to mouth, often synchronized across entire rows (yes, watch for it) drives me to distraction.

Worst of all is the fact that the size of the popcorn container seems to grow in direct proportion to its owner. Giant, waddling fatties who take up two seats each can be seen stuffing great pudgy handfuls of the stuff into their gaping maws. It makes you want to shake them, to try and awake them from this consumerist nightmare – “If it’s there, I gotta have it.”

And now the phenomenon has moved into the workplace. Seems I can’t go out to deposit a check without someone using the interval before my return to whip out a couple of packets of Orville Redenbacher’s. And if ‘relaxing’ in front of a movie while drinking in the sickly aroma of yellow goo isn’t bad enough, try working with the stuff.

Anyway, the point of this post is simple. If I see you in a movie theater eating popcorn, be ready to wear the damn bucket as a hat.