Here's a flash to, duh, rude movie patrons

Just when you thought it was safe to return to the movie theater, here's a new cell-phone related annoyance designed to drive moviegoers away.

Actually, this may not be a trend — like those distracting little blue or green screens that go on and off around darkened movie theaters like wildly unrestrained popcorn.

Or the constant text messaging that occurs between friends who just can't wait until the movie is over to share some piece of pop-culture wit ... or whatever passes for wit these days — and sometimes between people who are sitting right next to each other.

Do they really think that the tap-tap-tapping and that glaring bright light are less distracting than whispered conversation? Well, maybe.

True story: My wife leans over to a young woman who's had her cell-phone light blinking on and off throughout the first hour of the movie and says, "Could you please turn off your cell phone? That's really a distraction to the people behind you." And the girl says, "Really? You mean that bothers you?"

My wife, a saint of restraint, resists the urge to say, "Well, duh!"

But I digress.

So anyway, what I'm about to relate is probably not a trend — in fact, we can only hope it was a once-in-a-lifetime super-rude cell-phone blip.

We're sitting in this movie — the same movie where my wife has asked the young woman in front of us to stop using her cell phone — and about an hour or so into the picture, we see in our peripheral vision a huge flash!

We turn from the flash and look at each other in bewilderment, then go back to the movie.

A few minutes later, there's another bright flash.

And then another.

And then another.

The theater is full, and the flashes are coming from the center of the the middle section. The "flasher" is surrounded by people, but no one says anything.

As we watch more closely, we realize that it's a camera phone — or maybe something bigger, a BlackBerry perhaps? An actual digital camera?

And this woman is taking pictures — not of the screen, which wouldn't work with a flash anyway.

She's taking pictures of the kids she is sitting with, and then she's letting them look at the pictures — because you just can't have too many bright lights in a darkened movie theater. And the kids giggle.