Who the hell do these people think they are?

Yes, I know it's hard to judge an ignoramus for being one. But there's no excuse for taking a girl with Tourette's syndrome and asking her in front of her friends to leave a theater.

Jennifer Irizarry, 13, went to see "The Chronicles of Narnia" at Cinemagic on Dec. 26. Before the opening credits, several other movie-goers complained about her high-pitched squeaks and vocal outbursts.

She claims a manager led her to the lobby and threatened to eject her if she had another outburst. But theater management denies that she was asked to leave.

"What I told her was between me and her, but she wasn't forced to leave," said Jamie Pinard, the theater's general manger.

Realizing that her condition would worsen under the stress of being singled out in front of her friends, Irizarry decided to leave.

I don't give a rat's patoot if she was ejeccted or just hinted at. If she's got Tourette's, she jolly well knows she's making noise and is already killing herself to keep it down.

I know. I've got Tourette's, possibly a souvenir of my dad's Agent Orange exposure. (So does my oldest son, although he didn't get it from me; no genetic connection.) I was diagnosed at seven, and I spent my entire school career dealing with punishment from teachers, peer bullying, and horrid side effects because of it. My fifth grade year was spent hooting like an owl about every thirty seconds. Off and on, I've had tics like clacking my teeth like a nutcracker, and rolling my eyes as far back as they would go. Both of those result in brutal headaches. Fun, fun, fun.

"But why don't you just stop?" whine the ignorami. You betcha. Let's see you stop blinking. Really. I can stop ticcing just about as long as you can keep your eyelids still. And if you go too long without blinking, you do it twice as hard when you do give in to the urge. It's the same way with tics.

I'm not usually sensitive about Tourette's. It's technically a disability, but it's not like it's crippling. And it's not going to go away, either. So there's really nothing to do about it but laugh at it, and I do. For a while, my online name in chatrooms was "Twitchboy." I joke about being the "human castanet," that being my current tic.

But when I was 13, I was mortally sensitive about it. Kids would follow me in the school hallway, mimicking me. I had teachers who punished me for disrupting the class, as though I were getting a big ol' belly laugh out of grunting and twitching. And this lout with a manager's nametag has the gall to treat this girl as though she were one of those little splats that sit in the third row and throw popcorn at other patrons.

I hope the parents sue this theater raw. And if I knew how, I'd try to tell Jennifer that it really does get easier when you grow up. Nobody says anything to my face anymore; the people who know me know what makes me tic, and the people who don't are apt to think twice before giving trouble to a full-grown man. Eventually she'll learn to dismiss them with a withering look or phrase. But in the meantime, she's going to have to put up with ignorami who think the only disabilities are the ones that involve wheelchairs.

H/T to Amy the Advice Goddess, who, I hasten to add, doesn't strike me as ignorant. She does, however, strike me as both funny and right on target much of the time.