The headlights behind us turned the drive-in screen gray, but their car needed heat

Twenty minutes into a drive-in movie, the screen began to fade. A vehicle two rows behind us had switched on its headlights, throwing two pale rectangles across the bottom of the picture. People honked. Someone walked over and asked the driver to turn them off.

The lights went dark for five minutes, then returned. This time I went back. The driver cracked the window and said she had two children in the car and needed the engine running for heat. Her vehicle did not let her keep the engine on without the daytime lights.

That changed the shape of the annoyance. She was not ignoring the movie; she was trying to keep two kids comfortable on a cold night. The headlights were still washing out the screen for dozens of people.

An employee brought over cardboard covers that attached to the front lights while leaving the engine running. The fix took less than a minute. What stayed with me was how quickly the crowd had treated the driver as the whole problem when the venue had clearly encountered this kind of car before.

At the exit, the employee said covers were available at the snack stand, but nothing on the ticket page or entrance sign mentioned them. The driver had spent half the movie being honked at for not knowing about equipment the venue kept behind a counter.

Next time I will ask staff first instead of joining a row of improvised complaints. The screen was not restored by anyone winning the argument. It was restored by one square of cardboard the venue should have offered at the gate.