Don’t see the movie Hop.

That may be the single most valuable thing I’ve said in nearly three years of blogging. A terrible excuse for a movie. For a while, today, my sister tried to argue that actually Sex and the City 2 is the worst movie ever made, but I’m not sure. (Hop, by the way, is a children’s movie with a lot of candy in it, so you can be sure that not only will you be forced to see it, you’ll later be compelled to purchase a copy on DVD.)

Other than that, Saturday night was delightful — still-bearable temperatures and a post-movie dinner with good friends. Some of us wanted salads, others Mongolian BBQ, still others pizza, so there was a flurry of ordering and table arranging at the crowded outdoor shopping mall, the kind of place that becomes home away from home if you live in these parts.

I walked over to the patio by the Paradise Bakery to grab one last chair when I noticed them through the window. They were seated inside at a table for two, their heads bent over a drink with two straws, their faces goofy with love and eyes only for each other — which is good, since I’m embarrassed to admit that I stared a little, then dragged Annabelle over and made her look, too. As discretely as possible. But still.

“Hey, Gilda, you’ve got to see something,” I said to my friend as I set the chair down.

“I know,” she said, her eyes glistening. “I saw.”

I know the young man from the check-out aisle at our Safeway; he was the prom king at a nearby high school several years ago, just after Sophie was born. Someone clipped the article for us from the local paper. I didn’t recognize her, tiny with long dark hair. Funny, I didn’t realize til I saw them that this is not something I’ve ever seen in person — two people with Down syndrome, obviously in love. Sure, there are documentaries and magazine stories and segments on 20/20. This was different. This was right in front of me.

“I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to point them out to you,” my sweet friend Gilda said.

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “After the last couple of weeks, this is the BEST.”

I kept stealing glances at them, waiting for Ray to get back with the pizza so I could grab some stir fry. It was dark outside where I was, and bright inside where they sat, and in my mind’s eye, there was a big pink heart drawn around the two of them. I wanted to clap my hands; you couldn’t wipe the smile from my face.

Just as Ray showed up, the couple walked out of the bakery and right past us. And then — you know that sound when the needle gets dragged across the record album, signaling the abrupt end to the happy tune, then there’s silence? That’s what I heard as I realized the couple was really a threesome. An older, tired looking woman shadowed them. I realized she’d been sitting at the next table the whole time. One of their moms, no doubt.

I’m not sure what I expected — that these two had driven here alone together? No, of course not. Maybe that they’d been dropped off for a movie and dinner, the way my  mom used to drop my friends and me off, even when we were (relatively) little kids. It doesn’t matter, I scolded myself. They are in love, they are happy. I backed up the movie in my head to the part where they were framed in that big, pink heart, sipping through their straws, lost in each other.

And then I got up and ordered my stir fry.