Huffman Coding

This past Memorial Day Sunday, the family went to a drive-in to see Madagascar.  With Claire unable to sit still in a theater for two hours (at least the last time we checked), it is our only option for a family movie.  I’m not partial to drive-ins, but the womenfolk like them.  Last weekend it was Kicking and Screaming which was lame, but Madagascar was pretty good.

Because it was a busy holiday weekend, Chris and I decided to get there an hour early and, without an afternoon nap, Claire fell asleep on the way there.  Perfect timing!  For the rest of the evening, Chris implored everyone to be quiet in hopes that she would sleep through the entire movie.

The spot we chose had a clear view of the screen.  As usual, we parked in backward and opened up the rear lift gate so the girls, lying on blankets on the flat minivan floor, could see.  We were on folding chairs in front of the bumper.  The first space between our van and the screen was unoccupied.  As the parking lot filled up, the spot remained unoccupied because it was little skinnier than most and hard to turn into, but as the evening wore on, more and more vehicles were tempted by it.  A car or two pulled in, but only to continue pulling through.

But a few minutes before previews started, a minivan pulled in the spot and parked.  The van obstructed our view of the bottom half of the screen.  With their tailgate up it was sure to block even more of the screen.  Chris, apparently unfazed by not being able to see a movie the family paid to see, deemed it my responsibility to raise a fuss and get the newly arriving van to move.

Now I hate confrontations with strangers.  I try to avoid them like the plague.  (Interestingly, I don’t mind getting snippy with friends.)   I figured that if I made a fuss, then one (or two) families are likely to have a bad evening.  And besides, I really didn’t have any reason to tell them they couldn’t take the spot.  It’s a free country after all (at least until the government deems you a “person of interest”), so I went looking for another spot to move our van to.

As luck would have it, there was a spot the next row back.  When told Chris that I had found a spot, she was less than enthused because we were already settled, but she allowed me to move the minivan with only a modicum of grumbling.  We dropped the lift gate with the girls still on the van floor and I managed to maneuver to the new spot, another skinny one, after a few zig-zags.  The girls giggled as they rolled around in the back as the car moved.  We raised the trunk and after a couple of trips back to the original spot to pick up the folding chairs and junk food we were once again settled.  Claire remained fast asleep in her car seat.  Score!  I was relieved that I was able to solve the issue without having to annoy any of my fellow moviegoers.

But for the evening’s vicissitudes, I earned no Karma…

A woman from a vehicle parked behind my new location, now decided to confront me.  She insisted that I lower my lift gate so she could see.  I declined to share with her the irony of the situation and told her I would try to see what I could do.

I had a short bungee cord in the trunk for tying down Claire’s stroller.  I hooked one end of it over the inside lift gate handle but found nothing to attach the other end to.  It was too short for everything but my folding chair.  If I sat down and didn’t move my chair, we’d be set.

At least until her husband stopped by and said that wasn’t good enough.  He said that security would stop by shortly and tell me to lower it more.  I knew it to be pure BS as over half of the vehicles in my row were minivans and most of them had their lift gate up much higher than mine.  But I had tried my best to be accommodating, so I wasn’t feeling guilty.  My neighbors understood my predicament.  The guy on Chris’s side, with his family in the back of a pickup truck, saw me flummoxed by my too-short bungee cord and offered me a cam buckle tie-down strap.  With one end hooked over the lift gate door handle and the other hooked over the rear window latch, I was able to winch down the trunk until it was a few inches above Chris’s head as she sat in the folding chair.  Low enough for the highest part of the curved trunk to be well below the roofline of the van.  Very cocoon-like.

It was enough to keep the peace; they didn’t bug me again.  Just in case, I will be going to Sears (now that I know what that kind of strap is called) before our next drive-in movie night.