I’ve been trying to cut down expenses lately, even on my day off when I often head for the multiplex cinema and view a matinee. On this particular fine, crisp, winter morning, I took out an unused Christmas gift, a free movie card, headed for the mall, and stopped off at Walmart, where I bought two small bags of candy for only a dollar each instead of the $80.00. per bag I would pay to the theater. In the interest of full disclosure, I did stuff the candy into my jacket pockets because theaters do not allow you to buy candy of your own when they can charge you $80.00 for the exact same morsel. Some of you may take issue with the ethics, but to me, the only transaction I owe a movie theater is that of paying for my movie ticket. If they also want to not allow candy in their theater for some particular reason, fine, but that is not their rule either. You see…Oh well…No need to digress.  You get the point. Right or wrong, there are enough real sins in my life that I’m not going to take on this one too.

And so, I had the cheapest movie experience money could buy (or not buy, as was partially the case.) A perfect day, to be sure, until I returned home and realized I left my jacket in the theater. I left it there because I had taken the thing off. It was a warm day and I wouldn’t have worn the jacket in the first place if not for the need to smuggle candy. When  I returned to the theater, the jacket was gone. None of the ushers remembered seeing it and nobody had turned it into the lost and found.

I liked my jacket. But hey, how about all that money I saved?

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