Screen Gems: Has a Movie Ever Taught You Something?

"When you see the lightning, count 'til you hear the thunder. lf you can count higher each time... that means the storm's moving away." On Wednesday night - and by night, I mean, like, 2 am - one of my twin 4-year-old sons was awoken by the thunder of an arriving storm. And by awoken, I mean screaming for Mommy and Daddy, craving some edification on what that booming noise was. I explained to the boy - as I have done before, yes, but when you're that young and the noise is that scary, things don't sometimes stick - that it was simply thunder, which sometimes comes with the rain. I then reached into my vast archive of trivial knowledge to explain that as the time between the flash of lightning and the boom of thunder gets longer, it means the storm is going away. Where did I first learn that little chestnut? Poltergeist, as told by Craig T. Nelson to li'l Carol Anne (and quoted above). Thank goodness the similarities ended there, and no tree limbs came reaching through the bedroom window, or the wife started crawling up the wall. As I then laid back in my bed, unsuccessfully trying to get back to sleep, I wondered: What else has a movie taught me? Or, better yet, what has a movie taught any of you out there? (And ideally, I'm looking for practical stuff, not Ebertisms like, "When you're racing into a building, there will always be a parking space available out front.") So give it some thought, I'd be interested to hear what other kinds of "edumication" the Cineplex has been learning us.