Lying about your age to get the kids’ price is cheap in every sense.

It is a small amount of money, and that is the whole problem. Saving a few dollars by misstating a fact puts a price on your word, and the price turns out to be a cinema ticket. Nobody is harmed seriously, nobody will find out, and you have still told a stranger something untrue to get something you were not entitled to.

Pay the right price this week even when the person at the window would not have questioned it. If money is genuinely tight, there are usually real concessions and student rates you can ask about. Keeping your word expensive mostly means never selling it for small sums.