This is weird...in the last three days, I have seen three separate references to “Poltergeist”...I rented the movie from the library on a whim...a co-worker mentioned it to me yesterday, and now this!
The movie has a funny memory for me-I grew up in a military family, and whenever you went to a movie at a base theater, they would play the National Anthem, and everyone would stand up, en masse.
Then, I joined the Navy, and that custom continued. I had been out of the Navy only a short time, and went with a bunch of friends as a civilian to see “Poltergeist” in the theater when it came out back in the early Eighties.
If you have ever seen the movie and recall, the very beginning of the movie starts with the National Anthem no precursor, nothing to tell you it was the actual movie, so I dutifully, with about 20 years of habit, stood up at attention.
In the gloom around me, I realized nobody else was standing up, so I kind of embarrassingly halfway sat down, but I couldn’t sit, it was just ingrained into me so thoroughly that I involuntarily stood back up, and after a few seconds more, I observed that nobody was standing up, but I thought “Hey. I am going to stand for this” and stood right back up.
I must have looked like a Jack-in-the-box!
Then when it reached the end of that introduction and it was clear that it was part of the movie, I sheepishly sat down and watched the rest of the movie. My friends all understood and thought it was hilarious, but I suspect those other patrons in the theater had no idea what this guy was doing bouncing up and down!
