A minor incompatibility

[eve_prime]

This week, our Friday movie was The Martian. J and I hadn’t seen it before, but we’d read the book, 10-11 years ago, so we knew what to expect overall. At one point, J wanted to talk about the science and engineering a bit – he waited until there was no dialogue to interrupt and said what he wanted to say. I wanted to stay immersed in the story world, the characters’ perspectives, the landscape, and the music, and signaled that I didn’t want him to be talking to me. That hurt his feelings, unfortunately. He’s used to having great conversations of this nature while watching movies on TV with his dad. And his dad would be an excellent person to have such conversations with in this instance, as he’s an engineer who used to consult with JPL and actually created a device that was sent to Mars, although it didn’t quite make it there because a mistake caused the spacecraft to burn up in the Martian atmosphere. So a conversation like that would enhance J’s movie-watching experience… while detracting from mine. I guess I’d be okay with that sort of thing if I’d already seen the movie many times and the comment was going to give me some new insight, or if it was a bad movie that I wasn’t otherwise enjoying. Oh well, too bad.