It's movie time. You know, the kids are in bed, you both have your laptops open. Hey, your partner might say, eyeing you with a smirk, wanna pick a movie? This is not a movie for which you will put down phones and computers, however; this is a Background Movie. As millennials, we must constantly be stimulated at all times or we will fall into a paralysis -- a coma induced by the lack of technology. Your grandpa may have walked to school uphill in snow in both ways, thirteen miles barefoot, but we will die because YouTube buffered one too many times.
Well, you might respond, what are you in the mood for? It is important to note that during this conversation, only one moment of eye contact has been held, a travesty to make etiquette teachers of the classic eras reel in abject horror. But, like the ignorant, entitled swine you are, you continue with your uncultured form of savage communication, which might as well be grunting for all the social good it is doing.
I dunno, your partner might respond, pausing from ranting on Read-It or Facetime or whatever it is the kids use these days, to take a bite of their snack. The 1950's dies a second death at the impunity of two people eating together on the couch, not arranged stiffly in the dining room on the hardest chairs in the world while the aproned wife poses with a hopeless smile.
Since no choice has been made while you stare at your monitors like a couple of light-addled moths, you decide to just put "Whatever" on. Whatever in my household is usually a movie about caped heroes that I've seen five hundred times, and also a movie during which my partner gleefully describes each scene. I smile and let my ears fill with the sound of the dishwasher -- the dishwasher being another knife in the proverbial back of eras where I would still be scrubbing tonight's three course dinner off plates and pans.
I have it made. I am a lazy trollop.
The movie begins -- the opening track fills the room -- and I find that I Cannot Write to this Music. A glance over at my partner reveals that he is neither listening to the movie nor working on his laptop. Instead he is on his phone, chatting away to one person or another. I seize this moment to rise and locate my headphones, moving across the floor that I only swept twice today in a fit of entitled brattiness. I want everything handed to me, even the right to not clean my own house, and the broom sitting in the corner awaiting another use is proof of that. I didn't even put it away.
What are you doing? comes the inquiry right as I am plugging my head with the earphones, about to introduce yet another noise into the cacophony of stimulation from which my brain violently shies.
MAKE IT STOP, it screams silently into the void.
Uhh, I wanted to write.
Well I can put something else on if you would like, my partner graciously offers, jeopardizing his standing in this world as an Alpha Male. He has conceded to a woman, and thus he is weak and his bloodline will not continue. I wanted us to watch this together.
Movie Night morphs into a gentle discussion of why Your Opinion Matters More than Mine, and is resolved only by a heavily debated decision to Go to Bed. This sort of conversation is the type that would make Mccarthy roll over in his grave, for it is clearly influenced by communism. Once more, Movie Night has evolved into going to bed early, which is just the first decision with extra steps, so that we can feel like we aren't going to bed too early. Millennials like to think they are making a difference, and we are not exempt from this clear truth.
