Remember When: A Breakfast Table Play
Characters:
- NARRATOR – Covers all non-verbal narration
- MARGARET (70s, spirited and mischievous)
- FRANK (75, dry sense of humor)
- RUTH (68, practical but fun-loving)
- HAROLD (72, storyteller type)
- DIANE (69, laugh-out-loud personality)
Setting: The Plaza Club at Beatitudes Campus. Five friends, actually more, but this is written for five players. Anyway… they sit around a table with coffee, toast, and fruit. Morning light streams through the windows.
MARGARET: (pouring coffee) You know what I was thinking about this morning? That time I drove my father’s Buick through the garage door.
FRANK: (chuckling) Through it or into it?
MARGARET: Through it, Frank. Completely through it. I thought reverse was first gear.
RUTH: How old were you?
MARGARET: Sixteen! Had my license exactly one week. My father came running out in his undershirt, just standing there with his mouth open. And you know what he said? “Well, at least you admitted it.”
DIANE: (laughing) That’s beautiful. My parents would’ve killed me. Actually, they almost did when I hitchhiked to Woodstock.
HAROLD: You went to Woodstock?
DIANE: Well, I got halfway there. Ended up in some town in Pennsylvania, completely lost, called my mother collect from a phone booth. She was so relieved I was alive she forgot to be angry until I got home.
FRANK: The magic of the phone booth. Remember when you actually had to find one to make a call?
RUTH: And you had to have a dime! I remember standing in the rain, feeding quarters into one of those things, trying to call my boyfriend. Got disconnected three times.
HAROLD: Speaking of boyfriends… (grinning) Who here did something absolutely ridiculous for young love?
MARGARET: Oh boy. Here we go.
DIANE: Harold, you’re smiling like you’ve got a story.
HAROLD: I climbed a trellis to my girlfriend’s second-story window. Romeo style.
RUTH: How romantic!
HAROLD: It collapsed. The trellis collapsed. I landed in her mother’s rose bushes.
FRANK: (laughing) Of course you did.
HAROLD: Covered in scratches, limping, roses in my hair. Her father turned on the porch light and just said, “Son, we have a front door.”
MARGARET: Did you still get to see her?
HAROLD: He invited me in for ice cream! We sat at their kitchen table while her mother put Band-Aids on my arms. Married her five years later.
DIANE: That’s actually sweet, Harold.
RUTH: I once “borrowed” my parents’ car at two in the morning to drive to the beach with my friends.
FRANK: You? Miss Responsible?
RUTH: I was seventeen and thought I was invincible. We wanted to see the sunrise over the ocean. Drove forty miles, watched the most beautiful sunrise of my life, and drove back. Snuck the car into the garage, went to bed.
MARGARET: Did they ever find out?
RUTH: Twenty years later, at Thanksgiving, my mother casually mentioned that she’d heard the car leave. Said she stayed up all night terrified, but when we came back safe, she decided not to say anything.
DIANE: Your mother was a saint.
RUTH: She said, “Some things you have to let your children discover on their own. Even if it kills you.”
FRANK: My contribution to youthful stupidity: I once jumped off a barn roof into a haystack.
HAROLD: On purpose?
FRANK: It seemed like a good idea! I’d seen it in movies. What they don’t show you in movies is that hay is not soft. It’s sharp. And there might be a pitchfork in there.
MARGARET: (gasping) There wasn’t!
FRANK: There was. Missed me by about six inches. My buddy Tommy looked down and said, “Frank, you’re an idiot.” He was correct.
DIANE: We all did such ridiculous things. Remember when we thought we were so grown up?
RUTH: I thought I was so sophisticated when I started smoking cigarettes behind the gym.
MARGARET: You smoked?
RUTH: For exactly three weeks. Made myself sick trying to look cool. Coughed so hard I threw up in Mr. Peterson’s trash can during history class.
HAROLD: That’ll do it.
FRANK: I convinced myself I could teach myself to surf. Landlocked state. Never seen the ocean.
DIANE: How does that work?
FRANK: It doesn’t! Went on vacation, rented a board, paddled out, promptly got tumbled like laundry in a washing machine. Lifeguard pulled me out. Very humbling.
MARGARET: At least you tried! I was terrified of everything when I was young. Except driving, apparently.
HAROLD: You? Terrified? You rode a motorcycle!
MARGARET: That was different. That was love. Billy Morrison had a motorcycle. Therefore, I got on the motorcycle.
RUTH: Where did you go?
MARGARET: Nowhere! We sat in his driveway and he revved the engine. I felt like Marlon Brando.
DIANE: (laughing) You’re killing me, Margaret.
FRANK: The best part about all these stories? We survived them.
HAROLD: Barely, in some cases.
RUTH: And we thought our parents didn’t understand us. Now I realize they were probably just relieved every time we came home in one piece.
MARGARET: My daughter does these escape rooms now. Says they’re thrilling. I think, “Honey, I escaped from my fair share of ridiculous situations. That was my escape room.”
DIANE: Everything seems so serious when you’re young. Life or death. The drama of it all.
FRANK: And now?
DIANE: Now I know what actually matters. Like this. Saturday morning, good coffee, better friends, laughing about the crazy things we did.
HAROLD: You’re getting sentimental on us, Diane.
DIANE: Maybe. But it’s true. We were ridiculous.
RUTH: Absolutely ridiculous.
MARGARET: And we turned out okay.
FRANK: Mostly okay. (raises his coffee cup) To being ridiculous.
ALL: (raising cups) To being ridiculous!
MARGARET: Pass the marmalade, would you? And Harold, tell us the one about the time you tried to impress that girl by cooking dinner.
HAROLD: Oh no. Not that story.
DIANE: Oh yes. That story.
HAROLD: (sighing, smiling) Fine. But you’re going to need more coffee…
(They all settle in, laughing, as the morning light grows brighter.)
