“It’s no use
listening to what people say, words are only there to hide their thoughts.”
–Terry
Pratchett
CAST:
Maggie–age 43
Man
Woman
Maggie will wind string around
the stage. She should start with a
thinner string visible to the audience (i.e. yarn) and progressively move up to
thicker strings until she ends up with rope.
She is wearing pajamas and fuzzy slippers. It is Christmas. She has
presents wrapped under a small tree.
Man and Woman will play all the other roles as needed.
It is important that Maggie’s
lines are read with nonchalance and with the kind of chipper attitude of a
woman having spent her entire life telling everyone (herself included) “No,
don’t worry about me, I’m fine.” Even
self-deprecating lines need to be said with an air of aloofness as if she
believes she has let go of the hurt.
Maggie: I have a theory
for life. It goes something like this:
We start out in life with total, complete, and unadulterated
self-confidence...which is destroyed by the time we get to junior high...we
then spend the rest of our lives trying to rebuild that lost confidence. That’s my theory. Where does the confidence
go? You’d think that starting out with
confidence it would be hard to topple us, but it’s actually quite easy. Like water dripping slowly to destroy a
mountain. Like the day I was at Sears
with my Mom. I was 5 or 6 years
old...kindergarten age, and there was a display of television sets. One set was on “Sesame Street” and all the
others were on the news. Obviously this
was a mistake so I proceeded to change all the tv’s so they were on the same
channel. Just as I finished my artistic
work a man in a dark blue suit stomped up to me and shouted...
Sears Man in a Blue Suit: (Angry, but not shouting) You’ve just ruined my whole display.
Maggie: I walked...no, I ran
away...to where Mom was in line and then thought about how mean that man
was. I’m sure he doesn’t remember
yelling at me. And I’m also sure that
I’m not the only kid he ever yelled at.
But, at the same time I remember it.
I think that was one of the steps down from my self-confidence.
(She looks at her strings.) I started out stringing popcorn for the
tree. I guess I got carried away.
When I was eleven I was on a
baseball team–not because I wanted to be, but because my neighbor was on the
team and didn’t want to go alone. I was
playing third base at 9:00 a.m. facing the sunrise. Anyway, the ball was hit in my direction and I lost it in the
sun. I didn’t make the catch, but I did
manage to pick it up and throw it to second to get the other runner out. Upon returning to the coach I said, “I
couldn’t tell the difference between the ball and the sun!” And the coach said,
Female Coach: The ball hit your mitt.
(She tosses in a ball of yarn that
Maggie either catches or drops)
Maggie: ...after that year, I didn’t play baseball
again...because my neighbor didn’t sign up.
I don’t know why I remember these things. I don’t know if we won the season or not. I don’t remember the color of our jerseys or
the name of our team, I just remember that one day when I didn’t catch the
ball. Isn’t it strange what our minds
will remember?
There are other things...positive
things, I remember, of course. Like Mr.
Schmidt, my eighth grade science teacher.
I asked him questions all the time.
He never seemed to get annoyed or bored by it. Maybe he was happy that I was trying to learn. And he joked with me, too. I think, if I look back, he was my first
crush. One day he brought in this
cartoon with a bunch of pigs sitting in a little pig classroom...one pig was
raising his hoof. The teacher pig said
to him, “There’s no such thing as a stupid question, but if there was, that
would be it.” Mr. Schmidt hung it on
the cork board, and smiling, pointed to it and said:
Mr. Schmidt: Maggie, this is for you.
Maggie: I giggled and
thought it was wonderful. Now it’s just
hurry the kids through school and don’t worry about what they learn as long as
they pass the state sanctioned tests.
She looks at the tree.
I buy myself Christmas
presents. My Dad died when I was
sixteen and Mom died about three years ago.
I’m single and an only child. I
wrap up my presents and put them under the tree with the tags marked to me from
different actors. This one (She puts
down her string and holds up a present) is the complete “Jeeves and
Wooster” series on DVD and the tag reads:
Hugh Laurie: To Maggie from Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry...hugs and
kisses.
Maggie: And this one (she holds up another present) is a
wok. It’s from Jamie Oliver.
Jamie Oliver: To Maggie from Jamie...you have to learn to “wok” before
you can run.
Maggie: (she picks up her string and starts winding around the
stage again) It’s a stupid pun, but
it really is a great present. I hate
wrapping presents...it seems like such a waste of time...but I do love
unwrapping them. It’s funny, I get
embarrassed whenever anyone gives me a present. I worry that the look on my face won’t match what they were
expecting.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, my theory of life. So anyway, these little things that should
go by unnoticed stick in our memories.
It then becomes a game of teeter-totter trying to balance out the good
and the bad comments. Sometimes the
good ones don’t get said as often as they should. Or sometimes the bad ones are just heavier than the good
ones. It’s like how the Wicked Witch of
the West came in on a broom and Glinda came in on a bubble. The broom is ugly but it takes up space and
has definite weight; the bubble is beautiful, but light and airy. Glinda’s bubbles don’t add up as fast as the
Wicked Witch’s brooms. At one point in
the movie Glinda says:
Glinda: Only bad witches are ugly.
Maggie: Which very few people remember, but the Wicked Witch
says:
Wicked Witch: I’ll get you, my pretty.
Maggie: And everyone remembers that line; you hear it repeated in
all kinds of scenarios, but to find Glinda’s words you have to listen really,
really closely.
Junior high and High school are
not the place to rebuild this lost self-esteem. It’s a place to try just to survive without too many scars. You’ve got to learn to ignore the girls when
they run in to class happy as all get out that so-and-so just asked them to the
dance when deep down inside you were hoping he’d ask you. High school cliques with their unidentifiable
rules that you can’t figure out if you’re an outsider. The girls who are interested in the boys
about two years before the boys are ready and then when they are ready they’re
so juvenile that you really don’t want to talk to them at all.
You head to university and by the
end of the first year you start feeling like you’ve shed the high school image
you had and you start to redefine your life.
Many people start rebuilding their self-esteem. But again, it depends on the balance between
the good and the bad. For example,
you’re in class and you spend time chatting with some gorgeous guy when one day
he turns to you and says:
Gorgeous Guy: Maggie, if you were a girl...I mean you are a girl
but...you know what I mean.
Maggie: Yes. I know what
he means. But it doesn’t matter. Not only are there more fish in the sea
there are seven seas to fish in. And
I’ve got plenty of strings to make a net.
Anyway, you continue with school and, if you’re like me, you find a
brilliant career. (Small pause) Did you ever see that movie?
Movie guy: Judy Davis and Sam Neill star in “My Brilliant Career”
directed by Gillian Armstrong. Based on
the novel by Miles Franklin.
Maggie: It bugged the crap out of me. Sam Neill is there and this girl chooses to have a career over
being married to him. Sybylla even realizes that she’s not beautiful. At one point she says:
Sybylla: I think ugly girls should be shot at birth by their
parents.
Maggie: She turned down Sam Neill! (She looks back at the tree) I think there might be a gift
in there from him. I wouldn’t turn down
Sam Neill. Even in his early days when
he was a little too thin.
Anyway, my career. I got an MBA and now work for a large
company running Human Resources for their main branch. I love meeting all these people and hearing
about their different backgrounds.
Human beings are such interesting creatures. So diverse. Every person
makes such different choices. We all
begin and end in such different ways. I
think the most fascinating people are the ones that you’ve known forever and
suddenly they tell you something you never heard before and it totally shocks
you. It makes you realize that there is
no end to what a person can do.
In the midst of my career I
started feeling very sick and ended up at the doctors office. The doctor said to me:
Male Doctor: You have endometriosis.
It is so severe that I recommend a hysterectomy.
Maggie: I imagined it looking like threads, white and
gray…crisscrossing in sampler patterns made by the mother I would never
be. (Small pause) My best friend
said to me:
Female Friend: I’m so jealous!
You’ll have no more periods and you get to go through a doctor observed
and medicated menopause. I’m seriously
so jealous!
Maggie: She gave me a book by Sheila Martin titled The Worried
Woman’s Guide to a Happy Hysterectomy.
The whole thing was pretty easy...the surgery and all...and I did have a
very quick recovery. The doctors said
it was because I lived a healthy lifestyle.
Besides, I didn’t have Sam Neill showing up at my door asking me to give
up my career for him so I wasn’t really using all that female stuff anyway.
Where was I in my theory? Oh yes.
We get into our careers...and, and, and our lives, and we grow older we
start letting go of the dumb things that hurt us in junior high. We realize that although at the time high
school was life it isn’t real life.
We let go of the girls that snubbed us and the boys that were too stupid
to notice us. We start rebuilding our
self-esteem.
Maggie chooses a present from beneath the tree and holds it
as she speaks.
Now, some people have an easier
time of it and are able to rebuild their self-image sooner than others. But not everyone gets pushed down to the
same level. And still others get pushed
down farther than we can even imagine.
Maybe a point of no return...and there is abuse that we–as
outsiders–can’t understand. And of
course there are mental issues, like depression. Anyway, we build and rebuild ourselves until we find a day when
the bubbles outweigh the brooms.
Maggie begins to unwrap the present, first untying the
ribbon, and then slowly removing the wrapping from the box.
So, that’s my theory.
Female: (to male) This
theory is completely conjectural.
Maggie: We start out with confidence and self esteem
to rival the stars. When we look in the
mirror we see ourselves, our real self.
Male: More a hypothesis than a theory.
Maggie: But by junior high and high school we’re
destroyed so that when we look in the mirror we only see the ugly parts, the
wrong parts. We become tied down to
what we’re taught; we are bound by what we believe to be our Missing
Parts. Then we spend the rest of our
lives rebuilding our self-worth. Most
will succeed.
Maggie opens the box. She removes a noose and holds it up.
Female: (to male) She
never understood the difference.
Fade out.