Friday Night Movie Night

Friday Night Movie Night is a weekly tradition in our home. Kids are in bed by 8:30 and the lovely Wife Klem and I indulge ourselves where for two hours we can turn our brains off and let our parental obligations rest while we enjoy a film.


1996

Wife Klem and I were dating and living 100 miles apart and saw each other almost every weekend. Typical Fridays in the late afternoon we’d walk to the video store for two films (this was before Netflix) followed by a walk to the grocery store for our dinner fixins. [A favorite meal of mine remains homemade chicken burritos with Wife Klem’s special mango salsa!]

After cooking dinner the first of the two films would be viewed with the meal. Clean up, do dishes, and spark up the second film. Good times! Before long Friday Night Movie Night (FNMN) became an immovable entity. Turns out we like it that way.


2001

The stork delivered the first of two Klem children. We happily accepted, even though this necessitated a modification in FNMN protocol. We decreased the number of films from two to one. We found that we couldn’t start the viewing as early with a moppet under foot plus it turns out being a parent can be exhausting. Knocking back two successive films would stand good odds of rendering this fella asleep.


Thirteen years after inception FNMN remains strongly in force. Wife Klem and I both look forward to it as our reward for muscling through the necessary legwork to achieve this weekly culmination. Depending on how the week is progressing anticipation and encouraging words commonly fly on Thursday (i.e., “We’re almost there, FNMN tomorrow.”)

We’ve already discussed its future. When the kids are older we’ll get back up to two movies. The first movie to be viewed as a family with dinner. A Friday night treat, if you will. Then send the kids to bed and Wife Klem and I can turn our brains off and let our parental obligations rest while we enjoy the second film.

On tap for tonight we’ve got Transsiberian.
-klem