“Get in my trunk.”
Amber and Cami get in giggling and we drive to the movie theater. We pull up to entrance and hush them before we see the guy at the gate. He peers into our car to tell us how much we owe him. Since there’s only two of us “in” the car, we pay half price since we smuggled Amber and Cami into the drive-in.
My two best friends have never had an experience like this, since the drive-in theater is an endangered species. I loved going to drive-ins growing up, but I didn’t understand how rare of an experience it was until much later. Sneaking people in by hiding in the trunk or crouching in the floor of the backseat under a blanket hoping the guy at the entrance didn’t see you was my earliest experience of working the system for my benefit.
Maybe I’m part of the reason drive-ins have tapered off the edge of the universe. Now they’re a novelty that people considered the expense their contribution to a dying art. I’m very excited to share in my best friends’ first experience with a drive-in. We’re going to Atlanta soon and of all the things we could do in the city, we’ve made the drive-in a priority.
Does something have to become rare before we’re willing to invest in it again? It seems we’re constantly embracing more convenient ways to watch movies and forgetting the value in unique experiences. My friends and I see the value in going to the drive-in, but there’s a lot of other movie viewing experiences that are being financially neglected. Where did all the Blockbusters go? There’s no incentive to drive to rent a DVD when you have pay per view available through your TV and instant streaming on your computer.