A whole play. Less than two minutes, start to finish. Tah dah.

Bitch: A one-minute play

© by McBeth

(two quick talking dogs, littermates, are in a shelter cage. MAGGIE, the elder, is primping while young BRIDGET paces and wriggles impatiently)

BRIDGET
Hey, let’s go out into the yard. Wanna? Wanna? Wanna?

MAGGIE
Heavens no, I just bathed.

BRIDGET
(pleadingly) Oh come ON. Come throw the ball around with me. I’m bored.

MAGGIE
(holding paws up) My nails, Bridget. I just had them done and I don’t want to get them messy again.

BRIDGET
(rolling head dramatically, audibly sighing) God, you’re such a fussbudget, Maggie. Come on, play with me!

MAGGIE
I can’t. He’s coming to pick me up soon and I have to look good. I want everything to be just perfect today.

BRIDGET
(crossing paws in frustration, snorting) Fine. I really don’t understand what the big deal is, anyway. He’s just a guy.

MAGGIE
Oh Bridget, no– he wonderful. (dreamily) He’s so tall, and he has such gentle hands. And – get this – he actually LIKES to take long walks with me! Oooh, when he calls and I hear his deep warm voice I swear it just turns me to butter.

BRIDGET
(A look of disgust crosses her face) Gross!

MAGGIE
Honey, (putting an arm around Bridget) when you meet the right one you’ll know it. You just, I dunno, feel it. Like, way down deep inside you gets all warm and mushy.

BRIDGET
(defensively) No I won’t. Who needs that?! No way. I like my freedom and there’s NO way I’m EVER gonna get all bent over someone like that. Besides, once you go and get yourself hitched to – What’d you call him? (mockingly) “That man o’mine” – you’ll have to do all the stuff HE wants you to do. (Bridget waves her paw to and fro to emphasize each point) It’ll be HIS schedule. HE’LL decide what and when you eat. HE’LL pick where you’ll go together. HE’LL decide who you see and how often you go out. Puh-leese. No thank you.

MAGGIE
That’s not true. He already told me that we’ll be seeing the gang all the time. Really! He enjoys hanging out at the park. If I thought for a moment that I was entering into a paternalistic relationship why, I’d … I’d … I’d bite his leg off and run away.

(BRIDGET sidles up to her sister, laying her head on MAGGIE’S shoulder)

BRIDGET
What’s wrong with staying here? Don’t you like it here with me, sis? We’re happy, right?

MAGGIE
Sure, sure. I love you. You’re FAMILY. But there comes a time in life when you have to leap out into the world and just, well, lap it up. Yanno?

BRIDGET
(sniffing) Once you’re with him I’ll never get to see you again. That’s what’ll happen.

MAGGIE
Hey now, don’t think that way. You just never know, maybe we’ll end up living near one another. And... and if we do, we’ll see each other all the time! We’ll visit each other and we’ll hang out and do fun stuff together. (struggling with a delicate fastener behind her neck) Here Bridge, can you help me with this? I’m not sure how to fasten this new necklace.

(BRIDGET moves behind MAGGIE, wriggling her hand near the base of MAGGIE’S neck. In the next room a man’s voice calls out, “MAGGIE! I’m here just like I said I’d be. Ready to go?” MAGGIE turns excitedly to face BRIDGET)

MAGGIE
It’s him! Well sis, I have to go. (embracing MAGGIE) Good luck, and if you ever come around the neighborhood - bark!

MAGGIE
(MAGGIE exits, calling behind her) I love you Bridgie! Byeeeee!

(Alone now, BRIDGET forlornly lays her head on her arm)

BRIDGET
Bye. (sighing bitterly) Bitch.

Who are you?

Recently, I played a goomle (that's a combo google + game, keep up with the hip kids or you'll be eating their dust soon, I swear it's so. What do you mean I made that word up? I haven't any idea what you could be talking about. Go away and let me continue).

Yes. As I was saying. I googled my name in its various forms to see who the world thinks I might be. To keep things simple here I've replaced all of the various forms - including my birth name, my 'daily use' name and my nickname with the one term "McBeth".

Who am I?

McBeth is...
- an associate editor for HR News.
- confident it's as easy as selling
or refilling hydrogen canisters at the local Exxon station.
- thought to be already dead.
- a minister at a church in South Carolina
- out of the office
- also the answer to another Air National Guard trivia question
- a hardworking art teacher
- systemic
- currently entering the 2nd year as Associate Director of Bands
- one of Kansas City's most enduring treasures
- characterized as a tragic hero
- published by Southern Music Company
- not an exception.
- realistic about that, too.
- a native
- called to a strange murder scene
- a scenery-chewing hysteric
- working on the map I mentioned
- sleeping.
- not qualified to hear this case.
- at the low end of the market pecking order

Let's have some writingly creative fun, shall we? We shall. What lines can I shift around to create something that resembles the beginnings of poetry?

* ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ *

A scenery-chewing hysteric
published by Southern Music Company
offering personalised astrology reports
for dogs,
for just $30,
... at the low end of the market pecking order

(She is) realistic about that, too.

* ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ *

A native,
characterized as a tragic hero and
one of Kansas City's most enduring treasures,
was working on the map (drawn by)
a hardworking art teacher.
Called to a strange murder scene
(by) an associate editor for HR News:

A minister at a church
in South Carolina,
thought to be already dead?
Sleeping.

* ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ *

confident it's as easy as selling,
or refilling hydrogen canisters
at the local Exxon station??

Also the answer to another
systemic
Air National Guard trivia question?!!

OUT OF THE OFFICE!!
(I'm) not qualified to hear this case.

* ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ * ~~~~~ *

aah. that felt good.

roots and wings

My mother had a plaque she'd hang in each of the homes we lived in. I no longer remember the background graphics (probably some cheezy sunset), but I do remember what it said:

There are two things we can bequeath to our children: one is roots; the other, wings.

When it came time for me to make that weird-ass decision to become a parent sixteen years ago I felt constant guilt for all the things I did provide my child. Am I giving him too much? Should I be letting him learn this particular lesson on his own? I should quit buying those ten cent Matchbox cars at Goodwill; he might get greedy. I'd feel guilty for what I could not provide him. Thought bubbles would percolate to the conscious level constantly: Real families do not live in a one-room studio apartment, nor do they delight in the fact that the one extra non-room (a narrow walk-in closet) will fortuitously double as the baby's room. Good parents do not buy bunkbeds in order to share them with their children. Good parents don't have to fill out piles of paperwork each new school year to prove they're unable to pay for lunches. But I tried hard to remember the timeless words on my mother's plaque and I tried to relax into my parental role.

My curly haired tot is now a good 3/4 of a foot taller than I stand. He's got sideburns, for petessake. He's not finished being my child, nor is he done being A child. Nor am I done parenting him. We still have driving lessons to screech through. We still have PSATs to decipher. He has his basic form and personality; these next few years are just the final brush strokes to the canvas he will be when he leaves my house for his next set of adventures.

The thing is -- in many ways he is who he will be. All these years I have been tending to him like one of my garden perennials: nutritional feedings, consistent watering, weed pulling, and the little seedling starts growing his own set of roots. They weren't something I could forceably attach to him; they just sort of got there on their own each time we met up with an encounter.

The days I let him figure out his own way to school because my two wake-ups and an alarm clock didn't outperform his sleepiness from staying up too late the night before? Scrrrrich! His tiny feeler roots grew millimeters, barely noticeable but there they were.

We've had discussions about trying to have a balanced life and how anything - drugs or alcohol or shopping or a friend or reading or fishing or cars - can so easily tip the balance out of whack. Little roots grew.

And when I embarrassed him beyond belief yesterday at Best Buy for speaking to both a clerk and a manager about my opinions re: what the Geek Squad's repair team did and did not do to his broken Ipod, he didn't really want much to do with me the rest of the afternoon. But on the way home I explained why I felt the way I did, I apologized for having embarrassed him, talked about why I expected integrity from those people, and why "it's fixed, isn't that's whats important?" really was not the point. And his roots grew.

At sixteen he has the majority of the roots he'll need for early adulthood, but he desperately wants his wings, this boy. He wants to work so he can save money to buy nifty cars and gadgets for the cars and tinkertoys for the gadgets for the cars. He takes pride in the fact that his friends all think he's weird because he is the only one among them that actually likes to save money. Now - I'm not sure where his joie de savings came from exactly but - it heartens me to know that he's got a remarkably steady head on his hormonal shoulders.

De-cocooned, he has discovered friendships worth maintaining and, together, they fly hither and yon each day. I'm told the very basics ('we went to the mall/park/garage'); I'm told all he wants me to know.

He wants dry wings. He wants a good clean breeze and a steady lift. And one day - probably sooner than I'd like, like most creatures in the natural world and just like the way it should be, he'll fly away from me.

slung sucklings sleep snugly

Nephew Theo naps in his hotsling