At the end of last week, I went to the movies with one of my two new friends named David. We went to see Swimming Pool, which was rather languidly, if beautifully, filmed and had a thought-provoking ending.

Before the movie, we found aisle seats and made ourselves comfortable. The theater filled up quickly. A very old woman, dragging behind her an even older man, asked if the two seats next to us were taken, and we indicated that they were not. They squeezed past us, muttering to themselves the entire time, and then discovered that, lo and behold, someone might take the empty seat in front of them. “Oh dear, I hope no one takes that seat,” the woman kept repeating in a histrionic attempt to scare any potential sitters away. “We won’t be able to see!” When a young woman did sit down in front of her, the old woman said, loudly, “Oh no! Someone sat in front of us! She’s so tall! Isn’t she tall?” In fact, the newcomer was of average height. Then the woman leaned forward and said, “Could you sit low so we can see? We’re sitting behind you and can’t see!”

The funny thing was that this old woman was no doddering little creature; she was quite tall herself, and brawny. She was much bigger than the young woman in front of her, and she was, incidentally, also much bigger than my friend David, who is three feet tall and was not remotely concerned about his own view.

Finally, in exasperation, the old woman got up and managed to find new seats just as the film started. David and I thanked our lucky stars, because we just knew she would be one of those movie talkers. But that left two empty seats, and the one next to me was immediately grabbed by a middle-aged man who leaned so far over the armrest between us that he was practically in my lap. He put one of his feet on the other empty chair and the other on the seat in front of him (much to the annoyance of the young woman who had earlier been instructed to sit low and now found someone’s shoe next to her face). Then he started coughing without covering his mouth. I nudged him through the whole picture, at some points rather sharply, but he did not move an inch. David thought he was trying to pick me up, but I think he was just one of those New Yorkers who copes with the multitudes of other New Yorkers by pretending he is alone and doing as he pleases.

I had a sore throat for the next two days.