Shrinkage

    By shrinkage I am not referring to the "Seinfeld" version of a male appendage encountering cold water, I am not anatomically equipped for that. The shrinkage that afflicts me is what happens when my bladder encounters a movie theater. I have been blessed that, despite my age, I don't have to get up at night to use the bathroom. Supposedly the bladder functions more efficiently at night, hence the need for master bathrooms. Mine functions most efficiently in the morning. I can't swallow my own saliva without having to go to the bathroom multiple times in the morning.  My schedule mostly cooperates with my bladder peculiarities, except on Tuesdays when I go to BSF. I can seldom survive those two hours without a bathroom break. Some of the women I pass coming and going complain they shouldn't have had that second cup of coffee. Second cup of coffee--I forego cereal on BSF mornings because of the half cup of milk.
    On mornings when we are on the road, my befuddled brain begs for caffeine but my butinsky bladder bullies me into abstinence. Afternoons and evenings I can go for hours without a potty break--unless I go to a movie.  Somehow, even though the bladder is a sightless organ concealed within the body and, in my case, well insulated by fat, my bladder can detect when I have entered a movie theater.  That is when shrinkage occurs. The same bladder that is content during eight hours of sleep or six hours at work, shrinks to the size of a raisinet so that I cannot make it all the way through a movie. It is not the movie's fault. I can watch the same movie at home on dvd where I have plenty to drink, leisure to pause, a bathroom mere steps away and not need to go.  Shrinkage occurs only at theaters, where I have to descends stairs, walk down a hallway and miss part of the movie. I'm proud to say I can do all that in record time in the  middle aged woman category.
     I am also getting pretty good at guessing when the slow times are in movies I haven't see before, but I missed the only scene in "Thor" in which Chris Hemsworth had his shirt off and the scene that explained why the new Bond film is named "Skyfall". However, calculating the length of the movie, anticipating potential unimportant scenes and appeasing the raisinet, diminish my enjoyment of the parts of the movie that I get to watch.  I have to wait for the dvd to come out to see what I missed because there, in the comfort of my own home with a beverage in one hand and the remote control in the other, (I hope the washing instructions author is not offended by my revision)--some shrinkage may not occur.