Bad Moms

     Tom and I were not intending last night to go see the movie "Bad Moms".

     We were, in fact, planning on seeing "Ghostbusters".  But I must have misread the show time, because when we arrived at the theater we learned that "Ghostbusters" had already started.
    After scanning the remaining offerings posted on the box office wall,  "Bad Moms" seemed to me the most promising choice and Tom was likewise game.  
     So we bought our tickets and entered the theater, unaware that it was not just a movie we were about to see, but the birth of an iconic cultural  phenomenon that I'm predicting  is about to take off like a race car and explode among  the  mothers of this country, mothers of every stripe, young and old, from California to the New York islands.
    Anyway, we entered the theater behind a group of five happily chatting women who appeared to be in their early fifties, a Posse, mayhaps,  not unlike  my own.

      But when we entered the theater, though we were plenty early for the show, we saw that the seating area was already filling up with groups of women, two, three, four, five, even six, sitting together.
       Except for Tom there was not another guy in the place.
   "Whoa, what is this?"  I rhetorically questioned Tom, then I apologized for having draggled him to a film that appeared to be an A-1 bonafide chick flick.
        We took  seats at the back of the theater (our preferred spot) next to a mid-thirtyish-looking African-American woman who was saving 4 seats.  Tom and I watched as more groups large and small of women arrived, teen-agers through middle-aged, though if I had to pick a dominant demographic I'd say late-twenties to late thirties, white, black, brown.

    Finally another man arrived, probably, we guessed, toted along by the woman he was with.  I eyed  everyone who entered and by the time the movie started I'd counted a total of five males in the crowded theater.  You can see in the above photo how crowded the place was by all the women who'd had to settle for the too-close-to-the-screen seats.  Tom and I were sans doute the oldest folks there.
      There was definitely a happy, hyped-up feeling among all these gal pals out for a good time,
  which they didn't have to work very hard at having, as the place was filled with laughter -often sympathetic laughter - almost from the beginning to the end of the movie. 
      I'm not saying one has to have experienced child birth to enjoy this film - Tom laughed as hard as I did - but amidst all the comic caricatures of overwhelmed, exhausted modern motherhood were just so many moments to which anyone who's ever been ensconced in the pursuit of child-raising could relate, including myself,  though it's been many years since I was raising four young children and I certainly never entertained even such mildly rogue ambitions as the "bad moms" in the movie,

​...who in truth are knocking themselves out trying to to be perfect moms,

...while having to deal with the peer-group pressure and pecking-order that determines not only their children's social status in school but their own as well.

     But most of all the movie addressed, in the funniest way possible, the paradox of parenthood:

...and the invaluable gift of friendship.

    After the movie was over  groups of women congregated outside the theater, where as I passed by I heard them talking about the movie,

...and, what else? Motherhood.

     I asked the above group of friendly young moms how it was that so many bands of women showed up to pack the theater on opening night.  They guessed it was because the movie was being chatted all up and down Facebook.
     And so I predict: From here word of "Bad Moms" is going to continue to travel among women at lightening speed, 

​...and it's gonna be big. ;)