It was just after 1 PM when I snapped. There was nothing unusual about the day; it was the same as any other Friday in my work-a-day life. But maybe that was the problem. Maybe it was the very ordinariness of the day, the sheer bearability of it, that made it so unbearable. I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t continue to sit there, playing by their rules, like nothing was wrong. I had to leave. I had to get far, far away from that drab prison, with its e-mails, and its production reports, and its soul-rending conformity. I had to break free. I had to run. I told no one. I just walked off the job without a word, drove to a sticky-floored old movie theater on the edge of town, and bought a ticket for 124 minutes of something like escape.

It is the frayed edge of the tapestry of life that is on display Friday afternoons at the cineplex. There are the young, the truant scofflaws, who should be in school learning how to reduce fractions, chat up girls, and process grief, but have slipped the leash for a few hours and have come here to hide out. There are the old, the refugees from a wakeful death, who boarded the convalescent home short bus, destination unknown, just to taste the fresh air, just to feel the sun, and were deposited here, at the old movie house, where the air is stale and the sun never shines. And then there’s me, somewhere in between: grim harbinger to the young, patient understudy to the old, faceless worker who just couldn’t take another minute.

Together, we are the Anarcho-Cinemalists, united in our impotent midday defiance, our shared moment of empty freedom in the flickering darkness, and our passionate love of Mike-and-Ikes.