April Fool's Play

Lucy Lots
Language Arts
2^nd Period
April 1, 2007

Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran

[To tune of the Beach Boys, somewhere between 30,000 and 665,000 Iraqi lives depending on who you ask, 3250 American lives, and well over a trillion dollars that we know of. Music gradually fades as Ira and Brit take the stage]

IRA: Mommy, Brit went into my room without my permission!

BRIT: Did not!

IRA: Did too!

BRIT: Did not!

IRA: Did too!

[Georgina peers down the hall, witnessing a few seconds of the squabble. But she’s in the middle of getting ready to go out for a quiet stroll through Bagdad with the neighbor, Mr. McCain, and decides to ignore the problem for now. She loads the hunting rifle just in case for when Dick gets home.]

BRIT: Mom, Ira went into my room and took a bunch of my action figures!

IRA: Well, that’s because you came into my room without asking!

BRIT: Did not!

[Her countenance changes as she starts to get worried about her toys. She remembers one time when Ira hid mum’s favourite earrings for over a year and two months! Meanwhile Ira picks up a plastic figure and mimics it talking]

IRA: We love to snoop around Ira’s room. We’re always invading his privacy…If you’d just say you’re sorry, admit that you were wrong and that you were snooping around my room and promise not to do it again, I might just give them back, you know.

BRIT: [Making a huge effort to look strong and unaffected while holding back tears]
Well, I, I didn’t, I mean, I didn’t mean, I…

IRA: Allah, what a spoiled little pest you are! It’s absolutely unbelievable!

Brit: [Whimpering] But I, I…

IRA: You, you, you, exactly. You’re mom and dad’s favorite. You get everything. How come you get to have your own superdeluxe supersoaker, and Star War’s ship and bee bee gun and I don’t, huh? It’s not fair!

FIRST CHORUS: [Peeking through the window]
Yeah, yeah, yeah! [Their protests get progressively louder, from mumble to groan to full out screaming, so loud it’s becoming deafening. More and more neighbors hear the fight and run over to join Ira’s crowd.]

GEORGINA: [This is starting to tick her off, to push her buttons. She was so looking forward to her peaceful stroll, even maybe making some plans to go fly fishin’, and veggin’ out just a tiny bit more. She’s so close to the maximum conscious veg-out state. She can just feel it.]
Sweet Holy Jesus, blessed be thy name. Wha’d ya gotta do round here t’git a little peace and quiet? Now you tell me! [Peering upward] Seriously, Jesus, that wasn’t one of them rhentrical questions. [Peering back down the hall] Children, this is unacceptable behavior! [She’s heard enough. She closes her door. Dick will take care of this soon.]

SECOND CHORUS: [Brit’s friends peeking in through another window]
Ira is so ridiculous, so unreasonable, making such a big deal out of everything! Yeah, yeah, yeah! [They jump into Georgina's nephew's Hummer hoping to bring back some others to witness the spectacle.]

[Dick comes home. Hears the squabbling and reaches for the rifle with a sly, stifled grin. He fires a round and toys start flying everywhere, breaking into pieces and making a terrible mess. Little action figure limbs fly across the room, Playdough splatters against the walls. Dick mumbles to himself.]
Ah, who cares? Mrs. Rumsfeld will take care of it tomorrow. No, wait, she was fired. Who is the new cleaning lady again? No matter, Mr. Snow will cover up the whole thing anyway. No, wait. Didn’t he have to take sick leave or something? What is it that he’s got again? Anthrax? Typhoid Fever? Lou Gehrig’s Disease? Carpel Tunnel? Oh who cares! You can always count on Rover to take care of these things anyway.
[He looks affectionately at his beloved pit bull and fires another round. But this time a stray bullet hits the propane tank that fuels their swimming pool. The explosion wipes out not only their house but the entire neighborhood.]

[Beach Boys music, begins loud, then gradually fades out] Yes we caaan, oh yes we caaan! We'll have 'em rockin' and a'rollin' rockin' and a'reelin' bomb Iran, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!

THE END

LUCY: [Lucy hands her mother the play she has just written for her language arts homework assignment. Long Pause.]
Ahem! So what do you think?

MOM: Oh, yeah, it’s great, honey.

LUCY: But you were just holding it. You weren’t even actually reading it; you were totally focused on the TV the whole time, watching CNN.

MOM: Don’t be silly of course I was reading it. I wasn’t watching CNN.

LUCY: Oh yeah? Then tell me what it’s about?

MOM: They’re fighting over who invaded whose space, one of them takes some of the other’s action figures, fighting over who should apologize, how unfair it is that only one of them gets the big guns…It’s great, your teacher will love it.

LUCY: [Scrutinizing her mother’s face with skepticism]
If you really were reading it, then tell me how it ends.
MOM: [Blushing]
Um…Oh, my. Look at the time!

LUCY: See! I told you you were totally focused on CNN!

MOM: We’ll, I don’t want to be late to the party. They’re fundraising for Hillary you know, or Greenpeace. I forget which.

[Mom’s a bit distracted: more details are coming out about Anna Nicole Smith’s death and then there was that boy scout lost for several days in the woods and then finally found, a heart wrenching affair for any mother, and that astronaut diaper lady, it was just too much! Forgetting that it’s nighttime and pitch black outside, she puts on her huge designer sunglasses and neglecting to turn off the TV and the lights, exits the house, firmly shutting the door behind her.]

FIN

Airport Absurdities

In few places does mankind dare to display the absurdity of life and the artificial social structures we put into place as overtly as it does in airports. I believe that it must have been the airport traversed on the way to the exotic, “primitive” land and not the exotic, “primitive” land itself that (ab)originally inspired structuralist thought. Claude Lévi-Strauss must have had an astronomical number of airmiles and nobody doubts that Lacan and Derrida were flying high.

When I arrived at the security checkpoint, I had a bottle of water in my bag and was told that I could not come through with it. I didn’t see the trashcan which was conveniently hidden behind the tush of the security guard planted majestically in front of it; so I asked what I should do with my bottle. “Drink it” his colleague said. I was thirsty (which was why I had purchased the bottle in the first place) but not thirsty enough to chug-a-lug 16 fluid ounces on the spot. Nonetheless, in no mood to argue with five guys twice my size at seven in the morning, I flipped back in my mind to one of those sweet old college memories and tried to visualize a group of drunken co-eds chanting “drink, drink, drink!” No dice, there were still 12 fluid ounces left. I gathered my forces and tried again; still there remained 8 ounces. So I asked about my bottle again and received the same answer though in a less civil tone since the guard was starting to get annoyed that I was “unwilling” to throw out my bottle—I had still not seen the trashcan. I have difficulty imagining any explosive liquid that one could chug 8 ounces of in two minutes while still remaining standing let alone still standing her ground. But okay, the rules are the rules, his job is to enforce them and unicorns aren’t real even if you develop a single corn on just one foot…I get it.

Waterbottleless, I tried to walk through the beep-wildly-when-anyone-who-has-forgotten-to-take-off-his-or-her-
belt-tries-to-walk-through-it machine and again I was stopped. I had already sent my coat through the x-ray scanner along with my shoes and my bag and was beltless to begin with. I was however wearing a fleece sweatshirt over my shirt and I was asked to remove that too. What the hell was this, airstrip tease? This time I convinced myself that I should be flattered. Since I could see no material reason for this request (in both senses of the term) I decided that they must have wanted to ogle my glorious breasts. At first I imagined this theory confirmed when the fleece top that had so concerned them and whose removal was so indispensable was forgotten in the machine. When I impatiently asked if they were done scanning it and if I could have it back they had no idea what I was referring to. Then I realized that the water bottle scenario was playing itself out again with another thirsty-but-not-quite-thirsty-enough traveler and the same portly guard still standing squarely in front of the garbage can. So much for my breasts; and so much for “security.” Evidently it is too difficult for five guards to enforce beverage container disposal and watch the x-ray monitor simultaneously.

When I finally made it through security (“Wow, they must be thorough if it takes them so long to monitor just one scrawny little woman!” some poor schlub desperate for reassurance must have been thinking) I was tired and frustrated. So, looking for a way to blow off some steam, I decided to provoke a nasty quarrel with the “courtesy phone.”

Not everything at the airport was bad though. With CNN blasting in the waiting area I learned two astonishing things: (1) that Anna Nicole Smith was dead and that the cause of death would not be known for several weeks. (What a relief, how else would the news channels have had enough time to prepare the tributes she so deserved before the case was shut and closed? Now they would have adequate time to prepare these stories and maybe even a little to spare to give us a few details about Iraq as well.) (2) That Barak Obama was running for president. (I’ve got to admit, his announcement floored me.) I am also happy to report that after having had the opportunity to view the safety procedure video on the plane again (it had been a solid four months since I had seen it) I am now relatively confident that I know how to properly attach and detach the seatbelt—confident enough anyway that I think I’ll still remember how to do it next week for the return flight home.