The Mrs Doubtfire Experience

The first Movie I ever went to see at the cinema was Mrs Doubtfire.  I use the word 'see' liberally here.  We did buy tickets, we did make it to the Cinema albeit over an hour late and it wasn't worth watching in the end.

The year was 1993, I was 5 years old at the time and I lived in a border town in Northern Ireland.  We were still living through what is best described as ongoing Guerilla Warfare and my town being a border town and of strategic importance was always a target of both sides.  Throughout my childhood the town was surrounded by Army Checkpoints.  You could not get in, or get out without passing through them, in effect if they wanted to or deemed it necessary, you could not leave.

For a while we basically lived under martial law.  We had soldiers in the streets armed with guns who would be positioned in the town centre as well as the suburbs.  For the most part as mentioned in another post, I was and still am quite desensitised to guns.  For that reason the soldiers in the streets never really bothered me.  The checkpoints did though as a child not fully understanding them I felt trapped by them.

On the day we were meant to go and see Mrs Doubtfire we were leaving the town to go and watch it elsewhere [the cinema in town wasn't showing it].  We had to leave through the checkpoints and on this occasion they decided to perform a spot check on our car.  I would just like to say for the record they never found anything and we weren't the type of people to be involved with that sort of thing.  They searched the car, quite thoroughly.  I remember being in the 'base' if that's what you would call it, and there were large concrete recesses near where the cars set that me and my brother were playing in, jumping around while my Mum and my Aunt stood and watched the soldiers and two of soldiers stood and watched us playing.

About and hour or so later after the car had literally been dismantled and rebuilt we were let on our way, needless to say we did not make it to the Cinema in time to see the whole Movie and the next showing was something ridiculous like 5 hours.  In all the day was a disappointment but never really played on my mind until years later when I was talking to friends in London about the experience who found the whole thing bizarre. 

I guess the point of this post is really just to say "isn't it amazing what you'll think is 'normal' when you have the naivety of a child?"