One evening, a group of teenage boys and girls comes to a movie. There are about five girls and six boys, all around fifteen to eighteen years old. Every ten minutes or so, two, three, or four boys come out, head to the men’s room, followed a few minutes later by a few of the girls, who of course head to the ladies’ room. When they each emerge, they come out giggling and being sort of secretive about something and acting somewhat suspiciously. During the first hour or so of the movie, they rotate between boys heading to the men’s room and girls to the ladies’ room, making two or three trips each.
The usher, now really suspicious, approaches me while I’m at the concession stand.
Usher: *To me* “Something’s going on with that group of teens. I’m going into the men’s room to check it out. Can you stand by the door and make sure no one comes in for just a minute or two while I take a quick look?”
Me: “Oh, sure. No problem.”
He goes into the men’s room and checks around. Being an older theatre, the toilets are all the old style that have the water tanks on the back of the toilet bowl. He takes the lid off one and finds two partially empty six-packs of beer in the toilet. He checks the other three, and they all have six-packs hidden in the bowl, two with one or two beers gone; the other two are still full six-packs.
He comes out and shows me what he found. I take the beer to the office and leave it in a refrigerator we have in there. He grabs a woman from the office to check the ladies’ room and has her check to ensure there’s nobody in there.
Given the all-clear, he checks the toilets in there and finds essentially the same thing. Again, he removes the beer and puts it in the office refrigerator. We then wait to see what happens.
A few minutes later, three of the girls come out, head to the ladies’ room. A minute or so later, they come running out, whispering to each other with a confused look on their faces, and quickly head back to their seats. They come back with two of the boys who head to the men’s room. We overhear them saying things in a whisper, like:
Boys: “What do you mean? Are you sure? It’s missing? How could it be gone? How can that be?”
They have the girls go in and check the ladies’ room again. Moments later, the boys come running, just as the other girls show up from the theatre, apparently wondering what’s up. The boys run back into the theatre, and then the other boys now also head to the men’s room, while the girls who just came out from the theater head into the ladies’ room.
Both groups come out from their respective restrooms and they all head back to their seats. My friend, the older usher, goes in and watches them from the back of the darkened theater. They are all whispering trying to figure out what the heck happened to their beer!
Just then, it seems that the oldest boy and the oldest girl apparently think something’s up, like perhaps the rest are putting them on or whatever, so they get up, and each goes into their respective restroom. They emerge moments later, with very confused looks on their faces, realizing that all their beer has somehow disappeared! They stand outside in the hallway where the restrooms are located, whispering to each other about what could possibly have happened. After a minute or two, they go back to their seats and finish watching the movie, which ends just over an hour later.
When the movie ends, the whole group is walking past us in the lobby, and we hear them talking among themselves:
Teens: “I don’t get it.” “Where could it go?” “Do you suppose that jerk from school took it?” “I don’t think so; I didn’t see him here tonight.” “You didn’t believe me when I told you it was gone, did you?” “Well, it was so weird. I don’t get it…”
And so on.
They continue this chatter for a few seconds. Just as they are passing the older usher, he gives them an enthusiastic wave and shouts out to them:
Usher: “Thanks for all the beer, kids!”
The look on the teenagers’ faces was priceless as they all turned to look at him, realized that we’d found their “secret” stash of beer, and skedaddled out the door!
We didn’t bother calling the police, since we’d confiscated their beer and didn’t feel like dealing with it, which would have entailed staying until well after midnight, for sure. We just got a big kick out of it and laughed about it for months afterward! The five of us staff members all had a couple of beers each after our shifts ended that night and left the rest for another night. We never had that issue again, but from then on, we would check for hidden beer whenever we had a group of teens attending a movie.
Read the next Space roundup story!
