"We're going to the IMAX cinemas – you know, the 3D film place?" said Michelle.
That suits me just fine, but 3D is wasted on me because I can't see it. It is a real bugger and I feel a bit of a fool at times. All I really get out of it all is those funny paper glasses, though when I've lost my sunnies they come in handy.
I recall when Adelaide joined the twentieth century and built its first cinema with 3D, I thought that I would check it out and just went along to see what I could see. I knew what I would be able to see in the multi-dimensional realm (sweet stuff all) but I had to go along and make sure that suddenly my left eye hadn't just decided to work for some unknown reason. God, I'm a bloody stupid bugger, the eye is no longer even connected to my brain and it's been so long since it saw anything that the retina has started to atrophy. That means it's dead and one step removed from going rotten.
But I'm a dreamer and live on dreams, many of which I realise. This one, though, is a nightmare, and will never come to a good end. I do maintain a very healthy – though sometimes wicked – sense of humour, and I laugh at everybody and everything. Most often though, at myself, unless there is someone less fortunate than me around, cos let's face it, people are funny critters and the more up against it they are and the more trouble they have with a disability the funnier they are likely to be.
But let's get back to this cinema thing and I'll tell you what happened to me the first time. It was Jaws, that film about a toothy fish five miles long and on a diet of various parts of people and never the whole person. The girl on the counter handed me a pair of these 'specs' and said, "Enjoy it." And so started a long recitation of my visual deficits. The poor kid must have wondered what she had let herself in for. There I am with a white cane, paying for a theatre ticket with a blind concession card and then telling her that, "I can't see the 3D effect because I only have one eye and the other one is half-rooted." I went so far as to explain how the film was made into three dimensions and why it could only be seen that way by people with two good eyes. At this point I had a line of interested patrons behind me some of whom wanted to hear the rest of the explanation but most of whom just wanted to buy their ticket and get in to the film. There were several admonitions to, "Take the friggin' glasses and poke 'em up ya blind eye. We want to get in too."
I took the glasses and even stuck them on my face just so that I no longer stood out in the crowd. I went in and sat down in my favoured position near the front and to the left side. I didn't even realise that I still had the silly things on until I took my normal glasses off to clean them a bit. Then I realised that this film was just as good entirely flat and two-dimensional. It would have been nice to see it as others obviously were. There were a number of youngish school kids in the audience and every time the fangy fish swam straight at the audience, shrieks and screams were heard. I knew what they were seeing but it would have been nice to be able to see it as they were.
That was the first time I ever went to a see a 3D film, but the second time was a laugh and the film was not funny at all. I went along with a friend and his wife and their youngest grand-daughter. The girl was only eight, so escaped my explaining how the thing all worked. There was a travelogue at the start of the thing, and that was 3D as well. Kangaroo Island, if I remember right, and some underwater film taken at Seal Bay. I watched Loren, the grand-daughter, and when the underwater shots came on she reached out and grabbed for something that she thought was there, but of course I could see that it wasn't. "Hell," I thought, "there really is something there, she just put it into her pocket. Can't be. We'll just have to wait till we go home and find out."
We got out when the film had finished and got into the car and Loren said to her grandma, "Look Nanna, I caught a piece of seaweed for you." She reached into her pocket and almost cried because her piece of seaweed had gone. "I must have dropped it somewhere. Can we go back and look for it?" It was hard to tell her that there never was any seaweed because she so obviously believed she had taken a piece of it for Nanna. We had to go home past the beach, so Denis said we would get some fish-n-chips and eat them on the beach and collect some real seaweed. This seemed to satisfy Loren, and me too, because I love food, and fish-n-chips sounded very good just then. Although she got some real seaweed, she didn't believe that the other piece could magically disappear, and I caught her looking in her pocket more than just a few times.