Monologue Mania Day #175 by Janet S. Tiger Honest Tea Aug. 6 , 2014

Welcome to Monologue Mania- one new free monologue a day

                                                                        - for a whole year!
Note: A few words about 'free' -  all these monologues are protected under copyright law and are free to read, free to perform and video as long as no money is charged. Once you charge admission or a donation, or include my work in an anthology, you need to contact me for royalty info.
 If you just started this blog and want to read the earlier monologues, please
scroll down for the previous days or go to http://www.monologuestore.com/ -click on the Monologue Mania button please scroll down.
     To start at the beginning - Feb. 13, - click here.
     For a list of the blurbs from each day, click here
Help  a playwright and get  more great  award-winning monologues - MonologueZone.com
Thank you for your comments - and for liking and sharing this site                            

-------------------------------------------------------------- 

Monologue Mania Day #175     by Janet S. Tiger    Aug. 6 , 2014

                             

                                              Truth Tea    (or Honest Tea, still not sure)            © 

                                                    (for the Book of Teas)

                                         A monologue by Janet S. Tiger   © all rights reserved

                                                     tigerteam1@gmail.com        

                (T is onstage, and, you guessed it - still with a Southern accent)

Where to begin?

Stories do not truly have a beginning.  You just jump right in wherever the teller takes you.

If you know the person, or were there when the original event happened, that is different, because you will have your angle, and then it is a different story.

But if it is a new story, a new person, it is like falling in love a little.  The person has never told you this story, so it is like a wonderful movie that you have never heard of, that you stumble on late at night, and are there, miraculously, when it begins, and, through some other miracle of nature, you manage to stay awake through during ten thousand ads for the products of - But Wait, There's More - and 'Call Now'

Just like that old black and white movie, this new story is like a new country - you have no idea if the trip will be fun, if the natives are friendly, if the attention needed to follow the story is too much.

Adventure.  The story dips and curves, the laughs are mingled with  excitement and sadness.  Then the ending comes - a surprise if you are lucky, but it doesn't have to be.  It can be expected, like life - you know you're going to die - the mystery is when.

So you have the first kiss - never to be repeated, never to be forgotten.  You can only kiss someone for the first time, once.

My mama used to say that.  It was a veiled way of telling me about virginity, but I found out over life, that it actually meant much more.

The loss of innocence is a continual event, like breathing.

Someone disappoints you - the innocence continues to leak out.

Until you are old, and there is no innocence left - or so you think.

Then you read somethin’ in the paper, or God forbid, you see it on the TV - and you realize that the innocence you thought was long gone with your baby teeth and hymen, is still there, buried deep in you, and the horror you feel is brand new.

So it is with a new story - when you hear that story again, you listen - did the person tell it the same way?  Or are there new details - changed details?  Did the train travel for 2 days or 3 - or 100 as an exagerration, like my friend Honey used to do.  I realized years later she expanded things, like her waist - so that she would not have to deal with the specifics of any one story.

How could you, after all, argue with her if in one rendition she said she ate a thousand chocolate covered cherries and in another, years later, it became a million?  You knew that she had eaten a lot of those damned cherries - and the truth was evident on her small but very ample frame.

An accurate story, one that never changed, that was only in books.  And, when you get old enough to read about the author, you find that what you read, printed and in a cover, is often not what the writer put down to start.

You can see their notes - they change words, phrases, paragraphs, delete whole chapters.

So what is the truth?

What is the real story?

After years of trying to figure it out - was mama right about their honeymoon- or was it Daddy’s version that was most accurate?  Was Grandpa bein crazy when he said a raccoon bit off his toe?  Truth was - He did not have a pinky on his left foot. … Or was Grandma's version correct - where granpa had gotten a bad infection as a boy and they had to remove the toe, being as it was before anti-biotics.  And he was lucky to keep the foot.

The raccoon story wins every time.

It is the one you remember.

         (She takes a deep breath and steadies herself, this is not easy)

Now I am ready to tell you a story that will explain many things….about why I am opposed to this upcoming marriage of my oldest granddaughter.  And  I will never speak of these things again this side of the grave….. so listen closely…….

          (She leans over as lights go off her.  End of scene)

Janet S. Tiger    858-736-6315
www.JanetSTiger.weebly.com
Member Dramatists Guild since 1983
Playwright-in-Residence
Swedenborg Hall 2006-8