PROMPT: WHAT THREE MINUTE SNIPPET OF TIME COULD ALTER YOUR CHARACTERS’ LIVES?
THREE MINUTES ISN’T A LONG TIME. BUT A LOT CAN HAPPEN.
IT’S THREE PAGES.
WHAT LIFE-ALTERING EVENT CAN YOU FIT IN THREE PAGES?
(The setting is a living room. Chicly but slightly shabbily decorated, it’s Christmas. HARRY walks in the door, his wife, CLAIRE, is sitting on the couch watching tv)
CLAIRE
Hi Har. How was work?
HARRY
Oh the most mind sucking waste of time I can ever imagine. How were things here at the ole homestead.
CLAIRE
What’s it that Sylivia Plath did? Stick her head in the oven? If we had a gas stove that’s about where I’d be.
HARRY
So what I’m hearing is that we’re thriving.
CLAIRE
Completely thriving. Honey how did we end up like this?
HARRY
I don’t honestly know. We were going to change the world. Not be like our parents. I was going to find a job at a newspaper and write for a living, now I just am head of HR for a newspaper pretending it’s the same thing.
CLAIRE
And I said I’d never be a homemaker like my mother. But when Julie came and I realized how EXPENSIVE day care is, it seemed silly to just spend my entire salary on day care.
HARRY
I’m sorry you feel caught here, I wanted to give you everything.
CLAIRE
You’ve given me all you can and I love you and that’s all I need.
(She gets up and kisses him.)
HARRY
(Going into his pocket)
Hey, maybe our luck will change?
CLAIRE
What is that?
HARRY
It’s a lotto ticket!
CLAIRE
Harry, what have I told you about wasting your money on those things?
HARRY
It’s 300 million dollars!
CLAIRE
So what, maybe we can buy a house then?
(They look at each other and cackle)
HARRY
Don’t you want to cultivate a little hope, Claire.
CLAIRE
It’s not the hope I’m worried about, it’s the inevitable let down. Things like lotto wins don’t happen to people like us. They happen to people who subsequently spend money on things like solid gold toilets who then get harassed by their friends and family and in a blink of an eye this extravagant lump of money is gone.
HARRY
I really married the most optimistic woman in the world…
CLAIRE
I’m serious!
HARRY
What would we do?
CLAIRE
I guess practical stuff. Pay for childcare so I can actually pursue my dreams. But I guess sometimes I fear I don’t even know how to connect with my dreams at all.
HARRY
You’d find it. We could finally buy the house of our dreams.
CLAIRE
Well the news is almost over, it’s time for the inevitable let down.
NEWSCASTER
And now for tonight’s Powerball numbers. Let’s see what have, “1, 19, 45, 57, 42 and the Powerball Number: 16.”
(The two look at the paper. Look at each other in awe. Blackout)
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A cross between Iris Apfel, Miriam Margoles, Lucille Ball. But I am a devoted maximalist through and through. Although, as another inspiration once said
Style—all who have it share one thing: originality.
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