I Got Troubles

I'm having trouble with the day after tomorrow. The Day After Tomorrow. The DVD movie, with which I have mysteriously parted ways. I'm showing it tomorrow to one of my classes, since it is near the Thanksgiving holidays, and we have just finished a chapter on climate and meteorology.

Only last year, I had The Day After Tomorrow in my hot little hands. Now I can find all of my other movies that I showed at school (not exactly the truckload that it sounds like), but there is no Day After Tomorrow. Farmer H swears that he has not watched a movie for 10 years. Au contraire, the random reorganization of my movie shelves, and the inordinate amount of time Farmer H spends in the BARn, beg to differ.

The #1 son swears that he has never seen that movie, because all of his friends told him that it sucked. The Pony reminded him that I showed it to my classes last year, including a class in which #1 was enrolled. #1 swears that I showed it to other classes with his suck-decrying friends, but not to his class.

The Pony searched the basement for The Day After Tomorrow and declared it to be officially missing. Not so fast. He also declared Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Dante's Peak to be officially missing. And I found them side by side on a shelf where The Pony has just finished searching. I plan on looking a third time tonight.

In the meantime, I switched to Plan B, which deployed my mother to The Devil's Playground to purchase another Day After Tomorrow. The workers told her they did not think The Devil dabbled in The Day After Tomorrow, and after a cursory search of the stacks, decreed it to be officially missing. I searched The Devil's website, and found that indeed The Devil puts no stock in The Day After Tomorrow. Though it can be ordered from his website as a combo with other movies. No thank you.

I called the local Blockbuster. The girl there had plenty of time to do my bidding, what with them in foreclosure and all. She said that yes, they had ONE copy of The Day After Tomorrow. I predicted that nobody would be rushing in there to rent it in the next two hours, and told her I would stop in after school. Which we did, at the very moment that the girl stepped out onto the porch of the mini-mall and fired up a cigarette while shivering in the 42-degree dusk. I waited a few minutes for her to finish, because it really sucks when you work in retail and no customers show up for three or four hours, and just when you try to take a little break from all that hard work of doing nothing, one rears its ugly head.

While waiting on the longest cigarette in history, a car pulled up and a little girl ran into Blockbuster. #1 said urgently, "That little girl is going to get The Day After Tomorrow!" Which made me heave myself out of T-Hoe and rush to the storefront. I really thought I could take her. Lucky for Little Girl, she was only returning a movie, and not usurping my ONE copy of The Day After Tomorrow. Smoking Gal helped me find it.

For $2.99, I am the queen of The Day After Tomorrow. For three days. Funny that Smoking Gal had told me over the phone that they did not have any Days After Tomorrow for sale. Yet on the receipt, it said that for another $9.99 I could own it. Like the #1 son said, "What are they going to need it for? They're going out of business."

I might be buying a little chip off the old Blockbuster if I can't find The Day After Tomorrow this weekend.