Lucinda Jenkins
I took a seat in the lobby, hugging the bucket of popcorn onto my lap. The movie wasn’t going to start for another 30 minutes and I hoped my willpower would allow me to save at least a few kernels for the show. But I’m weak. I popped a handful into my mouth and resumed people-watching, which is often far more entertaining than any movie. Alexandria’s Potomac Yard theater is fairly large, providing ample viewing opportunities of both films and fans. I was thinking just that when the lobby show started…
Three smartly dressed young ladies with long dark hair smiled as they walked past me to wait together on a nearby bench. They held their popcorn tightly and talked amongst themselves without touching a kernel. I didn’t recognize their language, but I marveled at their willpower. One of them became excitedly animated as she leaned in close to whisper something to the others. The three of them burst into laughter after her comment.
As the ladies continued chatting, two very stylish-looking men sat down directly beside me and began to converse in yet another language. They absentmindedly tied and re-tied their scarves as they spoke. Both seemed quite serious for a while, then one grabbed the knee of the other and they belly-laughed over something said.
I glanced around at the lobby’s growing crowd. Alexandria in general is quite diverse and this specific audience was a perfect snapshot of that diversity. I stopped eating my popcorn long enough to simply listen to the cacophony of voices around me. So many languages! The clamor was overwhelming in a beautiful way and no language sounded like any other.
I mindlessly reached into my popcorn tub to scoop out another handful of buttery goodness, still determined to save some for the movie, and continued to study the room. As I did so, two elderly women in long fur coats walked by me to take their place in a forming line. They talked to each other in hushed tones adding one more language to the lob-by’s mix. One woman touched the arm of the other, patted it gently as she spoke, and both giggled softly.
A raucous group of teenagers stared into cell phones as they marched in unison toward the concession stand. Calling to each other in still another language unknown to me, they paused to focus on the screen of one teen’s phone, laughed maniacally, and continued to the food counter to place their orders.
Wow, I thought, as I tossed a little more popcorn into my mouth. What I saw when I looked around the room was so thoroughly interesting and amazing to me. Such different people, different languages, differ-ent accents. Every conversation so unique. Not one similarity in these folks that I could discern, yet there was something I was only vaguely aware of at the time that seemed to bind them together.
Just then, the two elderly women in furs giggled again, loudly this time. Across the room, the three smartly dressed women guffawed wildly over something. The two stylish men beside me again belly-laughed over their own comments. More maniacal laughing from the teens as they high-fived each other and peered into the screens on their phones. Throughout the room I noticed various groups alternately speaking in a way that I didn’t understand, then displaying joy in a way that I did.
They laughed. Ah, there it was. The common denominator became clear.
No language or accent floating around that lobby was like any other, to my ear. Every sound more different than the one before. They could have said anything, anything at all, and I would not have known what it was. They were all so different. But their laughter? I knew what that was. They were all the same.
The lobby began to empty as the wonderfully varied array of moviegoers filed into the theater. I remained in my seat thinking about all I’d just seen. A group of people so diverse, so different from one another, so purely not the same in any way. Until they laughed. I was almost jealous that I had only witnessed it all and not been a part of this scene of language and laughter.
I stood to go and join the others in the theater and reached, deeply this time, into my tub for another handful of popcorn. It was empty.
I laughed.
