Carib Cinema: Lines, Swines & 2 for 1 in Jamaica

If you're Jamaican you've probably been to the Carib cinema. It's been around for years and often premieres films on the same dates as US cinemas. Pretty cool. You probably know about the 2 for 1 days too right? On Mondays and Tuesdays you and a friend can see the latest film for the price of one. These are understandably highly attended days, but there is another price to pay for economy: your dignity, but it's optional.

There are two entrances to the cinema. Most people flock to front entrance about an hour or more before the gates open. At the very moment the box office opens any semblance of a line - or humanity - vanishes into a swinefest of hoggish...hoggishness. The soundtrack to this activity is something like Professor Nuts 'Inna Di Bus'. It really is bad.

But around the back, the soundtrack is  a nice classical piece. Not only do people stand patiently in a well-defined cue (as it's called in the UK - they love cues here - in fact I think they stand in line to join a line) but they unwittingly think there is only one line to the right, which is inevitably longer than the neglected lesser known line to the left. In any event, folks at this entrance retain their brought-upsy. Why the difference?

One thesis is that those at the back entrance drive (there is a parking lot around the back) and are used to entering their vehicle without fighting 30 other people to do so. The folks at the front take the bus and are in 'sideways-and-go-round' mode. But that can't be true, walk-foot folks often enter from the back along with the alleged more civilised drivers.

The solution is simple really. There are narrow stairs at the back that force patrons into a cue. Now when folks approach the cue the collective order and decency is catching. So catching, in fact, that persons often refuse to join the neglected left line (which is not visible from the parking lot) because no one else is in it. People often think this left line is for persons with reserved tickets only, or brown people (just a guess, I don't know). Amazing. 

Order and decency is catching. If narrow passageways force people to be orderly we might have a solution to Jamaica's crime and violence. Indeed, the UK is known for its very narrow roads and small-roomed houses. Maybe they have applied this theory already, after all the UK is very epitome of order (except of on Weekends and during Happy Hour at the pubs...and footy matches).

I suggest the Government should hire a few hundred thousand citizens to simply stand together in orderly groups doing things in an orderly fashion in strategic places around the Island. We can give them specific roles like 'garbage-throw-awayers', 'not-block-the-road-when-the-traffic-lights-don't-workerers', 'I-have-no-desire-to-kill-youers' and the like.

Surely if enough of us gather together, in say Half-Way Tree Square (I know - eeew!) and frown disapprovingly at drug dealers, junkies, corrupt politicians, taxi drivers and lazy career beggars they will stop doing what it is they do because of the peer pressure alone. The hard part is getting all of these perpetrators to stay still long enough (in Half-Way Tree) to get a good frown going.

Thank me in British pounds.