I was in Panama City, Florida in May 1977, just turned 15 years old, and my parents recently separated. It was like escaping into another dimension, and I was so enthralled with the "amazing" and "new" special effects that I saw it four more times before my mom and soon2be step-father said, "Enough!"
Sitting in the very front row, it was like riding on a virtual roller coaster during the attack on the Death Star, zipping and zooming between the canyons on the back of an X-wing fighter. Considering that I'd never even been on a roller coaster before then, it was the scariest ride I'd ever never been on.
That theater on the corner of 15th Street and Lisenby Avenue, at the edge of the KMart shopping center has long since closed. Just as KMart did. But even decades later whenever I drove by it, I could still imagine seeing myself in line around the building waiting to buy a ticket for the memory of a lifetime.
I was blessed to go in the first week and there was no line, yet. It was indeed the memory of a lifetime.
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