Dinner over Dead Bird
A friend asked me the other day in an email how my Thanksgiving was, and instead of giving the usual answer of 'Good. How was yours?" I really thought about my answer. I felt my experience was best summed up with a short little play full of actual dialog that occured over my table. I present to you "Dinner over Dead Bird"Scene: Kitchen table of my mother-in-law’s house.
Cast: My husband, mother-in-law, my mother, father, father-in-law, friend of the family, and her 16 year old daughter, me
Scene 1:
My Husband: Sue, are you growing your hair out?
My Mother: Yes, I am. I don’t look like a poodle any more.
My Husband: It looks great. I really like it longer.
Mother-In-Law: No….no, I really don’t like it. You should keep it short.
Scene 2:
My Mother: My mom didn’t have any more kids because she had RH negative blood. They would have had birth defects.
Friend of Family: I have RH negative blood too. So does Kaitlin.
Me: What is RH negative blood? I don’t know what that means.
Friend of Family: It has something to do with a racist monkey.
Me: What? A racist monkey…I’m thoroughly confused.
Friend of Family: No, a rhe, a ree, not sure how to say it.
Me: Oh, a rhesus monkey…. I still don’t get it.
Note: I never got a good explanation.
Scene 3:
Me: So, what do 16 year olds do? Do you have a MySpace page?
Kaitlin: Yes.
Me: How many friends do you have?
Kaitlin: 200 and something
Me: Are any of them predators?
Kaitlin: No!
Me: How do you know? Don’t you watch Dateline? Watch out for yourself out there.
Kaitlin: I only talk to my friends on there.
Me: What kind of music do you like?
Kaitlin: Breaking Benjamin.
Me: I have no idea who they are. God, when did I get old?
My Husband: On the way over here. It happened at this one intersection. It was sad actually.
Scene 4:
My Mother: Yeah, I have a living will set up. I won’t be on life support for more than 3 days. I watched my mother on that ventilator for five and a half months. It was horrible. That’s why my brother hated my step-father, keeping her alive like that…
My Husband: Can you set up your living will for a specific number of days?
My Mother: I think after 3 days they just take you off the life support.
Friend of the Family: Well what if you stay alive after that?
My Mother: More than likely I’d just suffocate to death. That’s what happened to my mother.
Me: You’re such an optimist, Mom. Can we change the subject?
Scene 5:
Me: Do people your age still consider Johnny Depp hot?
Kaitlin: Yeah. He’s older, but still cute.
My Mother: He has such great bone structure. You know who also has great bone structure?
All of us: No. Who?
My Mother: Billy Idol.
Me: Wow. I didn’t see that one coming.
My Husband: Me either.
1 Comments:
That has the sound and feel of a Hallmark special. Have you ever considered writing a screeplay? :)
john
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