We Have Memories Here

One young couple and one child. about 10 minutes.

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Entire Script:

WE HAVE MEMORIES HERE

Written By Warren Sager

The scene opens in a boy’s bedroom. He is wandering around the room… picks up a book or toy and sits down and plays with it… and looks at it. He is discouraged… he keeps looking over at the empty boxes stacked in the corner. His dad enters the room.

CRAIG: Hey, Squirt. How’s it going in here?

TOMMY: (with no feeling) Okay.

CRAIG: Tommy, you haven’t put one thing in a box yet!

TOMMY: I’m sorry.

CRAIG: Well, you’re not going to get finished if you don’t get started.

TOMMY: Do we have to move?

CRAIG: Yes, Tommy. You know that. We’ve gone over this.

TOMMY: Maybe we should go over it again.

CRAIG: Go over it again, huh? I don’t know why.

TOMMY: Maybe I have some new reasons why we shouldn’t move.

CRAIG: Son, there are no reasons why we shouldn’t move.

TOMMY: Yes there is! There are lots of them!

CRAIG: Okay, give me a for instance.

TOMMY: Give you what?

CRAIG: I mean, let’s hear your reasons. I’m listening.

TOMMY: I grew up in this house. This is my bedroom. I’ve never had a different bedroom.

CRAIG: But that is not a reason for staying, Honey…just because you have never lived in a different bedroom. You’ll love your new bedroom! You can fix it up just the way you want. It’ll be great!

TOMMY: But it won’t be this bedroom.

CRAIG: No, it won’t. I know you can’t understand it now, but you will see once we are living there. It is going to be better.

TOMMY: No, it’s not. I’m used to this house. I won’t be able to get used to a new place.

CRAIG: Yes you will. You’ll see.

TOMMY: I don’t see why we have to move!

CRAIG: Because Mommy is going to have a baby, and we need more room. This house isn’t big enough.

TOMMY: How big is that baby going to be?!!

CRAIG: He won’t be very big, but he does need his own room.

TOMMY: He can sleep in here with me! Babies don’t take up very much room. I will give him part of my closet and part of my room…

CRAIG: No, Honey. The baby needs to have his own room.

TOMMY: I’ll be quiet, so he can sleep. Mommy says that the baby is going to sleep all the time, so I will just leave him alone and let him sleep.

CRAIG: It wouldn’t work. You wouldn’t be able to make any noise. You could not play any computer games or listen to your music or anything like that.

TOMMY: That’s okay. I want him to be in my room.

CRAIG: Tommy, babies cry all the time. At all hours of the night, they wake up and they cry.

TOMMY: Why?

CRAIG: Because they are hungry… because they need to be changed.

TOMMY: Why are babies hungry in the middle of the night? Don’t they eat enough dinner?

CRAIG: Babies are different from us. They eat small amounts at different times. They eat just what they need and then they go back to sleep. It takes a while to get the baby on a good schedule. If we stayed here, we would have to have the baby in our room with us. In our new house, the baby will have his own room, and that way, Mommy can go in and feed him in the middle of the night.

TOMMY: I could feed him in the middle of the night.

CRAIG: No, Honey, you can’t. Only Mommy can feed the baby at first. Not even Daddy can do it.

TOMMY: Why?

CRAIG: Because. (Tommy looks at him with perturbed look since that is not an answer) Because only mommies can feed tiny babies. Once the baby comes, your mother can explain that to you.

TOMMY: It’s just not fair!

CRAIG: Well, your mother is better at explaining that stuff…(he realizes that is not what Tommy was referring to) What’s not fair?

TOMMY: That we have to move from here. I have friends on this street. I won’t get to play with them.

CRAIG: We are only moving a few blocks away, so we can come and visit your friends and they can come and visit you. Besides, Tommy, I don’t see you playing with that many kids in the neighborhood, anyway.

TOMMY: I play with kids. It won’t be the same. I won’t be able to just go out and play anytime I wanted. It would have to be when Mommy could take me over there.

CRAIG: I bet you’ll make new friends on our new street real soon. I know it’s hard to believe that right now. But this is what God is bringing into our lives, Tommy. He is blessing us with a new baby, and so He is making it possible for us to have a bigger home. It is where God wants us, so that is what is important. (Susan enters, obviously pregnant)

SUSAN: How’s it going in here?

CRAIG: Not too good. We are having the talk again. Maybe you should take over.

SUSAN: Tommy, would you like to go and watch TV while your daddy and I talk?

CRAIG: Susan, we can go and talk somewhere else so he can get some packing done!

SUSAN: I think Tommy needs a break.

TOMMY: Can I, Dad?

CRAIG: Go ahead. But just for a little while. We have a lot of packing to do. And only the family channel! (Tommy runs out of the room and Susan grabs an empty box and begins putting toys in it.) You know he is very capable of doing that himself.

SUSAN: Craig, he is a little boy!

CRAIG: He’s not helpless. There is no reason why he can’t throw toys in a box.

SUSAN: This is hard for him. He has never moved before. It can be traumatic.

CRAIG: Traumatic? He’s a kid. He’ll adjust.

SUSAN: Maybe. But that doesn’t make it any easier right now. You need to be more sympathetic and understanding.

CRAIG: Now, you weren’t even in here. You don’t know how nice I was talking to him.

SUSAN: I’m sure you were.

CRAIG: Well, what do you suggest? We are not going to change our plans!

SUSAN: Of course not. We just need to be easy on him. This is very hard.

CRAIG: I don’t understand it. I moved a lot as a kid. I was really excited each time.

SUSAN: You were excited?

CRAIG: Yeah! It was like an adventure. I remember when dad took a church in Wyoming. It sounded so far away and I was really excited about moving to this far away place and live in a new house.

SUSAN: How did you feel once you got there?

CRAIG: I loved it! We all did. Wyoming was a great place! It was very remote, but the people there were so nice and we made friends real fast and it was a really good church for my dad.

SUSAN: How long were you there?

CRAIG: Only a few years. Dad’s health was bad because of the altitude, so we had to move again. He took another church and we moved to a small town in Idaho. I say small town, it seemed like a big city to me, compared to where we had been.

SUSAN: And you were excited about going there, too? Even though you liked Wyoming and you had friends there?

CRAIG: Actually, yes. I didn’t know any better. Moving was cool before, I figured it would be cool again. My friends had a big going away party for me at school with a cake and all. Three girls sang “So Long, Farewell” from “The Sound of Music” and even did the dancing part. I thought that kind of stuff always happens when you move. I loved it.

SUSAN: I think you were just an unusual kid. Didn’t you get upset about leaving all your friends?

CRAIG: No. We talked about how we were all going to write letters to each other. I even had a crush on this one girl. She baked me a cake to take home.

SUSAN: She baked you a cake? You never told me about this girl!

CRAIG: Really? Well, it didn’t matter. I never saw her again. I was only 10.

SUSAN: So, the new place was another good experience?

CRAIG: No. I hated it. Once we got settled in, I realized that I hated the school, and the town, and even some of the people in our church. I won’t say that I hated them… but there were certainly things about them that I didn’t like.

SUSAN: So, you were excited about moving, and then it ended up being a bad situation.

CRAIG: Partly because we left such nice people behind in Wyoming, but also, I just could not fit in there. I remember one day at school, the ambulance came and took a girl away because she had overdosed on drugs. I hadn’t been around that before.

SUSAN: Was that the place where a deacon was mean to your dad?

CRAIG: Yeah… that was the place. The deacon who punched my dad in the stomach and knocked his glasses off. I begged my dad to find another church. Finally, we did move again. So… by then, I was very happy to move. Moving was always a good thing in my mind. My dad told me years later that I was the main reason that we moved away from there. My brother was a junior in high school, so he wasn’t very happy about it.

SUSAN: Well, I can see that Tommy doesn’t take after you in this matter. I guess he takes after me.

CRAIG: Did you move much as a kid?

SUSAN: We never moved at all! Craig….I lived in that house my entire life! That house was all I knew. I didn’t move out until I married you!

CRAIG: Oh… yeah, I remember.

SUSAN: It was very hard to leave my house and my bedroom… and all of that.

CRAIG: It was hard to move into a place with me?

SUSAN: I was excited about getting married and us having our own place, but still, there was just something sad about leaving my house. When you live someplace for 20 years, you can’t just walk away without having some feelings about it.

CRAIG: Well, I’ve never lived any place for 20 years. But even when I left home after high school…I was excited about it. It was like…

SUSAN: I know…an adventure. Some people are just not the adventurous type, dear. Tommy is probably more like me. He hasn’t lived here 20 years, but I can sympathize with what he is going through.

CRAIG: So, are you telling me that you don’t want to move either?

SUSAN: No, of course not. We need to move. I understand that. And I love our new place! I am very excited about moving in to it and fixing it up. I know it is where God wants us to be. (Pause) But we have memories here. This was our first home together. Tommy was born here. We have watched Tommy grow and we settled in to a life here. We made friends.

CRAIG: Wow. It never dawned on me that you would be having a hard time with this.

SUSAN: I wasn’t going to say anything, but I could see that Tommy was going through it, and I wanted you to see it from a different perspective.

CRAIG: Okay. I’ll go easy on him. And with you too, I guess.

SUSAN: No, I’m fine. But if I get a little weepy, you’ll know why.

CRAIG: I just hope you and Tommy don’t start crying at the same time… I don’t know if I can handle that. (Tommy appears in the doorway)

TOMMY: Mommy, Daddy… are you still talking?

SUSAN: You can come in, honey. (Tommy enters)

TOMMY: I was thinking. When I was a baby, did I have my own room?

CRAIG: You had this room, Tommy. This has always been your room

TOMMY: Well, I was thinking…. If I had my own room as a baby, then I guess my brother should get his own room, too. I guess that’s only fair.

CRAIG: Wow, that’s an angle I hadn’t thought of. So you are okay with moving then?

TOMMY: I guess. I still don’t want to….but my brother should have his own room…. since I had my own room.

SUSAN: And when he gets bigger, you two can share a room together if you want.

TOMMY: Okay! And you can give the other bedroom to the next baby! Maybe that one will be a girl!

SUSAN: (Looking at Craig) Let’s concentrate on one baby at a time.

CRAIG: Amen to that! So, Tommy boy… are you ready to do some packing?

TOMMY: I guess so. (Craig and Susan begin putting toys in boxes to help him) No! Wait! You can’t put my Legos in the same box as my transformers! I need one box just for my transformers and another box for Legos and stuff like that. I will need a whole box just for video games.

CRAIG: Whoa! Sounds like you have a plan. Maybe your mother and I should leave you alone so you can do it the way you want. (They both stand up and watch as Tommy is packing in an orderly manner.)

SUSAN: Wow. They change so fast. That was amazing.

CRAIG: It ain’t over yet. But it looks good for the moment.

SUSAN: He almost seems excited now.

CRAIG: Maybe he takes after his dad after all.

SUSAN: Of course he does.

CRAIG: I can’t believe I didn’t think about the “being fair” angle… of the baby getting what Tommy had when he was born….? (They exit together, and Tommy just keeps packing toys in boxes as the lights fade.)

THE END

Copyright 2004 Warren Sager