I had to fill in at the theater last night. I was not prepared for the exam.

I hadn’t realized how difficult this was going to be. I was handling concessions: there were 3 of us, Kate handling popcorn, Rowan at the pop machine, and me at the cash register and candy. People would come up, tell me what they wanted, I’d ring it up, call out the popcorn and pop order, and we’d instantly put their order on the counter, and I’d get their money. Sounds easy, right?

Typical experience: parent with 3 kids comes up. I push the buttons for 1 adult and 3 kids. Then they all want concessions. Kid 1 wants a kid box, which comes with popcorn, a small soft drink, and one candy. I ask what they want to drink and to pick a candy — this is a child, these are major life choices. Say they want gummi bears and pineapple fanta. I grab the gummy bears and call out the order and go to punch ’em in, and fumble a bit trying to find the gummi button, while Kid 2 tells me he wants a kid box with a Bueno bar — wait, he ordered the candy before the pop, the point-of-sale system wants the pop first, I have to back track and get the drink order before I can click through, so I mentally file “Bueno” in short term memory while I get that, meanwhile Kid 1 tells me he wants Pocky rather than a gummi bear, so I have to change his order, while Parent tells me he wants a large popcorn and a large root beer, and I still have to figure out what Kid 3 wants. It’s all piling up with the first family to come in.

We had 62 people come to the showing last night.

This was a cognitive test! I don’t think I passed. I struggled all night to keep up. I get to do this exercise every week until I get it right, which is probably good for me.

Bonus observation! A lot of teenagers came in without their parents. This seems to be a common behavior, with parents dropping off a clutch of offspring, each one clutching a $10 or $20 bill, and turning them loose for a couple of hours without supervision. The interesting phenomenon is that the groups of teenagers were either 3 or 4 boys, or a pair of girls, no mixed groups. I guess this is the courtship protocol for young teens — no pressure to ask a person out, the theater is just a safe space to mingle and maybe make a connection. There weren’t many connections made, though. Boys stayed apart in rowdy groups, while I’d see the girls occasionally dart into the lobby to giggle and whisper together and maybe disappear into the bathroom. It was a weirdly inefficient procedure.

I was thinking back to my youth, and I might have been a strange outlier. I always went to the movies alone and didn’t interact with the other kids who were there at all. Maybe someone should have told me it was a way to meet girls, it could have changed my life. When I started dating a girl, going to the movies was not a good option (later we figured out that her subtle hearing impairment, which has gotten more severe over the years, may have been a factor in her disinterest in movies.)

Again, I didn’t see the movies — too busy. It turns out my volunteer work isn’t about watching movies, it’s about a weekly cognitive test and getting a glimpse of young people’s behavior.