Amigos

After shopping for needed items and before seeing the movie The Fault in Our Stars, my niece and I had a late lunch at a Mexican restaurant called Amigos where we were served impossibly fresh and sweet pico, just-made and perfectly limed guacamole, grass-fed burgers and a frozen mango margarita for me and a plain unfrozen margarita with salt for her, both in chilled mason jars. We watched the France vs. Switzerland World Cup Soccer game as we ate and sipped and chatted, all this sinfully indulged in at mid afternoon while my son, my daughter and my husband were hard at work. In honor of our family's work ethic, my niece and I made sure to enjoy our delicious escape from responsibility. Later, at the movie theater, the one with the red leather power recliners seats, we reclined and shed a tear along with the middle-school girls and their parents taking up the full two rows in front of us, who were seeing this tearjerker about cancer kids as a birthday party outing. A handsome, young-looking man handed out bowls to all the girls before the film, then filled them with popcorn while a slender red-haired, middle aged woman handed out napkins and drinks and a pudgy middle aged man took pictures of the birthday girl and her friends. My niece and I decided they were mom, dad and stepdad, all bearing equal responsibility for that gaggle of soon-to-be-weeping tween girls. It's a good film. As my niece said, "It wasn't treacly. It had just the right amount of cynicism for me."