STRANGER THAN FICTION: ARE THERE ANY ROBERT KINCAIDS WAITING OUT THERE?

It's so embarrassing to start bawling in a movie.

Movie prices are higher than ever, and we consumers want something for our money, gosh darn it.

Fellow poverty-stricken columnist David Angier and I have found a way to beat the system. We look at the movie ads, pick out what we want to see and then perform a primitive ritual involving popcorn to ensure our flick comes to the dollar show.

Considering this city has nine regular-priced screens and only one dollar show, the odds are pretty bad that everything we want to see will end up at the Broadway Theater. Our back-up plan involves matinees.

Aren't the movies great? For a couple hours, you get to sit in front of a huge screen and almost mechanically shovel popcorn from your lap to your mouth.

But what do you do with the trash when the food is gone? The Other Half and I have an ongoing debate about this. I say a movie theater floor is like one big garbage can, which is why I never put my purse down on it. He says you actually hold the popcorn and soda leavings until the end and then put them in the proper receptacle.

Yeah, right.

One negative movie-related experience is when you go to a real tear-jerker and start bawling toward the end. The screenplay writer should leave plenty of time for the audience to cry and then get cleaned up before the movie is over. That prevents the embarrassing moment when the lights come on and your cold-hearted movie companion says, "For goodness sake, are you CRYING?"

Back in my youth, it was the rare movie that made me cry. Now I tear up over commercials for long-distance service. "That Candice Bergen," I wail, "why can't they just leave her and her dime-a-minute rate alone?"

For example, The Other Half came home from work Sunday just as "The Bridges of Madison County" was wrapping up on HBO. He stared at me and my box of tissues. "For goodness sake, are you CRYING?" he said.

Call the book trite if you want, but that movie just tore me up, and I wasn't even premenstrual. It reminded me of all the other movies that made me cry, and I think there was a subconscious reason I bawled in each moving scene. Let's recap:

1. The scene in "The Bridges of Madison County" where Robert Kincaid stands in the pouring rain, watching his darling Francesca for the last time.

Subconscious Reason: Merle Streep is 40-something, Clint Eastwood is 60-something, and they still make a more striking couple than The Other Half and me.

2. The scene in "Bambi" where the mean old hunter shoots Bambi's mother.

Subconscious Reason: I nearly totaled a two-week-old car by hitting a large buck in Wayne County. Why didn't the hunter kill him instead?

3. The scene in "E.T." when the alien dies and when he is resurrected.

Subconscious Reason: Why does some brat kid have the opportunity to be abducted by aliens while I'm stuck in my miserable life?

4. The scene in "Star Trek II -- The Wrath of Khan" when Spock is dying and Captain Kirk can't touch him.

Subconscious Reason: I suspect that in Spock's shoes, instead of sacrificing my life to save the ship, I'd run for the escape pod yelling, "Eat my dust, you illogical wimps!"

5. The scene in "Forest Gump" when Forest talks to Jenny's gravestone.

Subconscious Reason: A man with the I.Q. of a pinto bean has enough money to buy a fleet of shrimp boats and I can't afford the shrimp cocktail at Red Lobster.

~Heidi Nieland is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.