Garrison Keillor (SINGS):
Please don't take me back to that old gang of mine
Back in the days of way back when
Once was enough for auld lang syne
I don't ever want to be young again.
I thank you, dear Lord, for the blessings you've brought
And I pray that your will may be done.
Make me sick, make me poor, make it cold, make it hot,
But Lord do not make me be young.
There was a boy who came to the show last night, John -- he's in the seventh grade -- and I said, How's that working out for you? Okay, he said. What could he say? His mother was standing there. He couldn't tell me what he really felt about seventh grade. (CRY OF ANGUISH, SOBBING) Seventh grade is a hellhole. And I just want you seventh graders to know that it does get better. It gets worse for awhile -- eighth grade is worse, and ninth, and ten through twelve are no picnic, and then there's college, which means indebtedness. You kids will graduate from college with about four million dollars of debt, and you'll have to work in the mines (CLINK OF PICKAXE, TR FOREMAN: Hey pick up the pace there--
Sue Scott: Please, sir. We're liberal arts majors--
Tim Russell: Dig that rock, lady. Otherwise, you go to the cotton plantation.
(BANJO)
GK: Down in Mississippi, thousands of college graduates are working off their debts picking cotton, in 110 degree heat.
(HUMMING UNDER)
TR (CRUEL OVERSEER): Hurry up. (WHIP) Pick that cotton! (WHIP) Stop that humming. (WHIP)
GK: That's what you children have to look forward to in the near future. Also of course the polar ice cap is going to melt (CRACKING, CRIES OF ALARM) and polar bears are going to come live with us (BEAR) and they're not going to be in a good mood (CROSS BEAR) and the hurricanes are going to be awful (EMERGENCY SIREN) and people are going to pretty much move away from the coasts and into Kansas and Nebraska. Omaha is going to grow to around ten million in the next twenty years. BUT-- there is a good side to growing older too. And one is that you can eat what you want with whomever you want to eat it with. This is a real benefit of grown up life.
I remember seventh grade. I remember walking into the lunch room and going down the cafeteria line where they put the slop on your plate (SERIES OF SLOPS) -- the instant potatoes, the creamed corn, the spaghetti, the chow mein, the tapioca pudding -- and then walk around the room trying to find someone who I could sit next to. Elaine--?
SS: Yeah?
GK: Could I sit there?
SS: You?
GK: It'd just be for a few minutes while I eat my lunch.
SS: Christine is sitting there.
GK: Where is she?
SS: She's coming.
GK: But there are four seats.
SS: She's bringing some people with her.
GK: How about if I just sit there until they come and then I'll vacate immediately, I promise?
SS: Sit over there by him. (FOOTSTEPS)
GK: Sheldon.
TR (TEENAGER, FRENCH): -- then: This is the French immersion table. You can't sit here unless you speak French.
GK: We don't have French immersion, Sheldon. That doesn't come in until the nineties, this is 1954, for crying out loud.
TR: (TEENAGER, SPEAKING FRENCH) (FOOTSTEPS)
GK: Butch?
Fred Newman: (BIG DEEP INCOMPREHENSIBLE VOICE)
GK: Never mind. (FOOTSTEPS) Who to sit next to at lunch? You walk into the cafeteria and all these faces turn and look and then they immediately look away and you can see people putting coats on the chairs next to them. Even though it's May and they don't need coats.They don't want you sitting there.
TR (TEEN): I'm saving this seat--
GK: For who?
TR (TEEN): Not for you. You smell bad, you know that? You stink. And you're ugly. You look like road kill.
GK: People weren't subtle in junior high school. Not in 1954. We hadn't had sensitivity training.
TR (TEEN): What you use for deodorant? Huh? Pine-Sol? Jeeze. Hey, look at that. You took extra carrots? Carrots!!! HEY LOOK! HE TOOK EXTRA CARROTS!!! How about we call you Bunny? Huh. Hey-- everybody-- look at Bunny. (CRUEL LAUGHTER)
GK: That's what seventh grade was like. It was torture on a daily basis. A prison camp. Of course sometimes it was okay. Sometimes it was better than okay.
SS: You can sit by me...
GK: I can?
SS: Yes. I was hoping you would. Have a seat.
GK: Is this some sort of cruel joke?
SS: No.
GK: You're not going to jerk the chair out from under me as I sit down so that I'd land on the floor and be an object of general ridicule?
SS: No. I'd never do a thing like that. I'm a Christian.
GK: Well, I've known Christians who would do that and do do that, so-- (HE SITS, CHAIR CREAKS) Thank you.
SS: I've always wanted you to sit next to me.
GK: You have?
SS: All year. All year I've sat in the library and watched the books that you took out and I took them out later and read them too. When you went to the blackboard and did algebra problems, I always felt you were doing it for me. And when you led our class in the Pledge of Allegiance and-- when I pledged my allegiance, it wasn't only to the flag of the United States of America or to the republic for which it stands, it was to you
GK: I don't know what to say.
SS: I know we should wait. We're only thirteen. And yet--
GK: What are you saying?
SS: I want to have your children.
GK: Okay.
SS: We'll drop out of school and skip going to college and that way we won't ever have to work on a cotton plantation in Mississippi.
GK: We'll grow old together. Someday we'll be twenty and twenty-five.
SS: Thirty.
GK: We'll home school our children. No lunchrooms for them.
SS: And at night you and I will go to restaurants. We'll sit next to each other and order whatever we want.
GK: Sounds like a plan. (BIG THEME) And that's what you have to look forward to, children. You'll have your own car someday (CAR START, REV) and you'll be able to get in it and drive away from all the people who never wanted to sit next to you (CAR RACE AWAY) and you'll go wherever you want to go and stay as long as you like. You'll be free. Don't go to college. This is how it ends up. (CHANT OF WORK GANG, CLINK OF PICKAXE. WHIP.
TR: Pull harder! Stop dawdling! Swing those hammers! Bust up that rock!) Be free. Be happy. Have faith. The phone will ring. (RING) (PICK UP)
FN: Hey. You want to have lunch?
GK: Sure. When?
FN: How about today?
GK: Kind of busy today, but-- let me move a few things around-- how about 12:30?
FN: Great. Where?
GK: There's a little place that serves slop not far from here.
FN: The Slop Shop?
GK: That's it.
FN: See you there. Twelve thirty.
GK: And that's one of the beauties of adult life. You have to suffer through a lot of useless math classes to get there, you have to endure the cruelty of classmates and the lack of decent transportation, and, as I say, someday the polar bears are going to be living among us in Omaha, Nebraska, but-- you can eat lunch and sit next to whoever you like. Honest. (BRIDGE)
TR (ANNC): Number 23 in our series of 47 programs, "The Advantages of Adulthood" -- join us next time when we talk about "Owning Your Own Stuff and Staying Up All Night If You Want".
BAND PLAYOFF