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Stop groaning, this one is easy.

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I’m sure I must have seen other movies before this one… we had a lovely old fashioned theater in my hometown complete with velvet covered balcony seating… and I’m sure my mother took me to all the Disney classics, but the first film I have full actual memories of seeing is The Poseidon Adventure.

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It was 1972 and Irwin Allen’s gigantic blockbuster disaster movies were all the rage.

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The premise was simple. Assemble a huge cast and blow them up. Or burn them down. Or in this case, sink them.

I’ve seen the film many times since then ( not by choice, because the husband is always tuned to the old turkey channel ) but my first time will always be special… because I was with my dad.

My late father was not a movie person. Hell, we didn’t even have a television in the house when I was young and when we finally did get one …. it was banished to a small rarely used room.

But on that day my mother was busy and my father offered to take me to the movies. I was an only child, a total daddy’s girl and the mere idea of it was heaven.

We picked the perfect seats and had the perfect snacks. (Hot buttered popcorn and Milk Duds in case you’re wondering) The lights dimmed, the music swelled and I settled in for a wonderful afternoon. I chattered like a magpie in the beginning and my father patiently and quietly answered all my inane questions.

Then it was happening. The actors were in place, the music changed to something ominous and then… the wave. The huge wave was about to sink the ship! It was loud! It was thrilling! People were screaming! Oh, the horror! I glanced over to gauge my father’s reaction to the cinematic magnificence before us….. and saw that he was sound asleep.

I didn’t have the heart to wake him… he worked long stress filled hours as the Vice President of a stock brokerage firm…. so I sat silently and watched the rest of the movie by myself.

He roused near the end, and pretended to have seen the whole thing. I pretended to believe him. And after all these years, it’s still one of the silly little memories of him that makes me cry.

So how about you?

What was the first movie you remember seeing.

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