(GK: Garrison Keillor; SS: Sue Scott; TR: Tim Russell; TK: Tom Keith; FN: Fred Newman)
(THEME)
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but on the 12th floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions --- Guy Noir, Private Eye.
(THEME UNDER--..)
(DOOR OPEN, JINGLE, CLOSE. FOOTSTEPS)
TR (JIMMY): Hey there, Guy. How's it going? Cold one out there.
GK: Yeah. But I gotta get out. Can't spend all day in my office. I get claustrophobic.
TR (JIMMY): Oh, I didn't know you were claustrophobic.
GK: Well, I keep it a secret. I'm sort of a closet claustrophobe.
TR (JIMMY): Interesting. ----What can I get for you? How about a beer?
GK: What's that beer there with the picture of the guy on the side?
TR (JIMMY): Oh, that's a new thing. If your husband is missing, you have his picture put on beer cans.
GK: Oh. No, I'll just have a soda pop. Orange or something. Surprise me.
TR (JIMMY): I had an uncle who was claustrophobic. Went to college but didn't do well. The closest he ever got to a 4.0 was his blood alcohol content. Had to go live in Kansas for his claustrophobia. He peed in a wheat field once and he was arrested for Going Against the Grain.
GK: Is that right?
TR (JIMMY): He used an extract of wheat to make this ointment he came up with. Preparation G.
GK: Well, he came close.
TR (JIMMY): Yeah, he almost got rich. Then he just got old.
GK: Oh well. It happens to the best of us. The way I look at aging is: today I beat my own previous record for number of consecutive days I've stayed alive. (PHONE RING)(PICK UP)
TR (JIMMY): Five Spot. Jimmy speaking. ---- Yeah.---- Yeah, he's sitting right here.----Sure. ----- Yeah, that's fine. ----- Okay. See ya. (HANG UP) Somebody on their way over to see you, Guy. Somebody who's pretty upset.
GK: Oh. Thanks a lot. Who is it? Rico? Tony?
TR (JIMMY): Sounds like the parents of a college kid.
GK: Oh. Well, I get a lot of those in February. Want me to go hang around campus and see if the kid is hitting the books or hitting the video games. I was young myself once. Did it all. Drank, took drugs. Now I get the same effect just standing up really fast.
TR (JIMMY): Look out. Here they come. (DOOR OPEN, JINGLE, CLOSE. FOOTSTEPS)
SS (MOM): I can't believe this is happening to me. My own daughter.
FN (FATHER): Thanks for seeing us, Mr. Noir.
SS (MOM): I can't believe she would do this. After all we've done for her.
FN (FATHER): We're both pretty torn up over it, Mr. Noir.
GK: What seems to be the problem, folks?
SS (MOM): It's this.
FN (FATHER): We found it in her computer, Mr. Noir.
GK: My Life As an Unwanted Child by Lindsay Larson. --- Looks like some sort of a memoir.
SS (MOM): She wrote it for her creative writing class.
FN (FATHER): The teacher told her, "Write about what you know," and boy, did she.
SS (MOM): The cruel things she wrote about us.
FN (FATHER): Listen to this, Mr. Noir. -----"My father sat down at the table and in his dark green suit he looked like a Hefty Bag full of dead leaves. He was hungover again. His nose was runny and his nose hair glistened in his nostrils and his eyes were tiny as pinholes in one of those little boxes you're supposed to put a pinhole in and look at a solar eclipse through. One look at him and I was practically ROFL." What does ROFL mean?
GK: I don't know. Jimmy?
TR: It means --- uh ---- ragout of frog legs.
GK: It's some sort of dish.
SS (MOM): She makes fun of our home. Calls it "Hell with designer
lighting." My cooking ---- the way we dress ---- our collection of
Beatles albums ---- She quotes me as saying, "The only thing I have
in common with my husband is that we were married on the same day."
I never said it. Never said it. And then she says that the reason I never
farted was that I never closed my mouth long enough for the pressure to
build up." Where did she get that?
GK: So where was this memoir published?
SS (MOM): It wasn't published. It was turned in as a creative writing
assignment.
GK: Well, there you are.
FN (FATHER): She describes me as if I were some kind of lush. She
says, "One thing I learned from watching my parents is that the reason
God created alcohol is so that ugly people can have sex, too."
SS (MOM): Is that a nice thing to say about your parents? I ask you---
GK: Get these folks a drink, Jimmy.
TR (JIMMY): Okay. As the drunk said as he leaned over the toilet, two beers coming up----
GK: Never mind, him, folks. He's breathed too many whiskey fumes. Listen--- don't worry about this memoir or whatever it is. It means nothing. It's writing. Let it pass. Who's going to read it? Nobody.
SS (MOM): Well, we read it. We read it and the words will not go away. (WEEPY) Listen----- "My mother had an eerie surreal quality like when you wake up in the middle of the night and turn on the TV and there's "Jeopardy". We hardly ever spoke to each other in a meaningful way, IMHO. We were ships in the night, in two different oceans, and whenever I was with her my thoughts whirled in my head like underwear in a dryer without Cling Free."
GK: Well, she certainly has a gift for metaphor.
TR (JIMMY): Definitely.
FN (FATHER): And she said that I gave myself bubble baths by eating beans for dinner.
GK: What do you want me to do, folks?
FN (FATHER): It was the boyfriend who gave her these notions. We want you to find him.
SS (MOM): She brought this jerk home to meet us. I said, "Honey, couldn't you have found somebody nice?" She said, "Mother, if he wasn't a nice person, why would he be doing 500 hours of community service?"
GK: Listen. People in Minnesota write memoirs. On these long cold winter days, what else is there to do? So remember: there's a potential memoirist concealed inside everybody you know. Every time you go out for dinner, remember: this might appear in print someday and you wouldn't be the one with the witty one-liners. You'd be the one yawning with food in your mouth. So don't say anything you wouldn't want to hear repeated. And don't chew with your mouth open.
FN (DAD): I suppose you're right.
GK: Of course, I'm right. So this story here is untrue, about you having a religious experience----
FN (DAD): What religious experience?
GK: That when you got up at night to go to the toilet, God turned on the light for you. And turned it off when you were done. And you discovered you'd been peeing in the refrigerator.
FN (DAD): That's not true.
SS (MOM): It wasn't the refrigerator, it was the oven.
(THEME)
TR: A dark night in the city that keeps its secrets, where one guy is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions --- Guy Noir, Private Eye.
(MUSIC OUT)
© Garrison Keillor 2003