"Ellen Schoeters is a member of Actorama + where actors can upload a monologue or scene performance for peer review. What do you think of Ellen Schoeters's performance?"
(3 votes)
| Character | Brett | |
|---|---|---|
| Gender | Female | |
| Age Range(s) | Young Adult (20-35), Adult (36-50), Senior (>50) | |
| Type of monologue / Character is | Talking to the audience, Reminiscing life story/Telling a story | |
| Type | Comic | |
| Period | Contemporary | |
| Genre | Comedy | |
| Description | The Birthday Party - Brett talks about why she may have been fired from her job as a nanny/cook/maid. | |
| Details | "Nanny. Not." Middle of the Book | |
Summary
Brett talks about why she may have been fired from her job as a nanny/cook/maid.
Written by Jass Richards
| Excerpt |
|---|
| Todd, a quiet boy, didn't have enough friends for a game of checkers, let alone a birthday party, so from the start the party had the effect of accentuating his social inadequacies. But his mom insisted that her little boy would have a birthday party. He was turning six. So she invited all these other boys she d probably put up an ad at the Seven-Eleven who were aged anywhere from, well, seven to eleven, it turned out. Todd didn't know most of them. And he didn't like any of them. And he was afraid of some of them. Now, I don't know anything about doing a kid's birthday party. They didn't ask about that at the interview. They asked if I had a drivers' licence, they asked about my hobbies, and they were very impressed with the fact that I was university-educated. But I hadnt taken Birthday Parties 101. I hadnt even taken Child Psych. (I had taken Criminal Psych. So if Todd, or Jenny, had had a criminal record, that I would've been able to handle...) (And I d taken Abnormal Psych. Which, actually, turned out to be oh never mind.) I did, however, bake him a birthday cake. Sort of. Turned out I invented a pudding-in-the-middle cake. If I had patented it then (years before Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines did), I could've been a rich sonuvabitch by now. (Where was Steve when I needed him?) Anyway, the boys wanted to play cops and robbers or cowboys and indians or missionaries and natives, but whenever I hear gunshot sounds, I imagine people dying. Go figure. So I said no and suggested they listen to a piano concert instead. My Bach needed work. Well, no one but Todd wanted to do that. So I kept the birthday boy happy, oddly enough, by playing each bar of Bach's second Prelude over and over... The other boys went swimming and, apparently, two of them drowned. As I later explained to Todd, that was an excellent example of natural selection. If people who can't swim are stupid enough to jump off a dock, well, what happened was a good thing. Especially since, as young boys, they hadn't yet replicated their stupidity. Todd mutely nodded his agreement, having been tossed into the lake at three years of age by his He-Man-Dad, a strong advocate of the 'Sink or Swim' school of thought. (Todd had promptly discovered a third option, 'Flail about in Terror', thus demonstrating the false dichotomy error of reasoning. And so, though he hasn't spoken above a whisper since, he will have an advantage over his classmates in Critical Thinking 101.) ***** |
