By the way, I had my own neurosis surrounding beach vacations. Soviet people tend to have one because beach vacations were a big deal culturally. We went on them as often as we could but we were a sick, broken society, so we accumulated mental traumas in the process.
My beach neurosis was of the same nature as N’s but it manifested physically instead of mentally. I’d have a brilliant time but then exactly at the half-time mark I’d get sick and become incapacitated. If no illness lent itself to my neurosis, I’d start getting injured.
I’ve had everything on these vacations. Bronchitis, severe colds, gallbladder episodes, hypertension, diarrhea, allergic reactions to insect bites, cuts, burns, mysterious limps. Always at the half-time mark and always in the most intense version.
I got this cured. I’m leaving a vacation that I massively enjoyed and during which the worst physical discomfort I suffered was a mosquito bite.
Clarissa's Blog 
“my own neurosis surrounding beach vacations”
Mine are all about not deciding until the last minute and looking and not finding anything and thinking of all kinds of reasons I shouldn’t go… but once there (like the plane landing) I forget about that and have a great time… so I’m not in huge a hurry to fix it.
aside… do Americans applaud when the plane lands? I first encountered this flying to europe on Lufthansa and have encountered it sporadically since then… I actually think it’s a nice thing and join in anytime it happens…
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People applaud if the flight was hairy, with a lot of turbulence and scary drops. I agree that it’s a lovely thing to do.
Another very touching thing is when people clap at a movie theater. It’s the purest form of love because nobody is there to hear. But it only happens if the movie is a real masterpiece. I’ve only experienced this once.
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We don’t go to theaters much, but there was one movie made memorable by the audience. We caught the Saturday matinee showing of Madeline (based on a beloved picture-book, and had a certain charm even as a movie). What we didn’t know is the Saturday matinee at the discount theater is the destination for divorced dads who have their kids for the weekend. The theater was packed with happy, burbly 6-8yo girls. The first lines of the book were read aloud over the opening credits: “In a house in Paris all covered in vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines…” And dozens of little girls were reciting along with it. And through the whole movie, they all laughed when it was funny, they all cheered when something exciting happened, and there was riotous applause with the closing credits. It was one of the best movie experiences of my life– just delightful 🙂
This is one of the joys of the cheap theater: sticky floors, questionable seat hygiene, but stuff happens there that doesn’t happen anywhere else. In my teen years, every time a new Disney movie came out, the local high-school band would get the score as soon as it was published, practice for several weeks, and they’d have it down pat by the time the cheap theater got the movie (it was a second-run place). They’d all show up unannounced, pay their $3, haul their instrument cases in, and play along with the movie. I was never lucky enough to catch one of those, but you could always tell when they’d done it, because people talked about it for weeks.
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“when people clap at a movie theater”
I’ve seen that happen a few times, most interestingly twice with the same movie…
I saw the 1955 French horror/thirller Les Diaboliques in an arthouse movie theater and at the end people spontaneously began applauding…
A few years later, at a different arthouse theatre in a different city – the same thing happened.
I’ve seen better movies but the way it builds up tension and then wraps it up sort of leave you breathless…
I had a similar reaction to a sort of mystery German miniseries I saw a year or two ago called Weinberg, it was entertaining and though it had some problems it absolutely totally stuck the landing resolving everything while making both dramatic and emotional sense. That could never happen in the US because they’d want to leave room for a second season…
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