LIFE

February 24th, 2021

Starring: Martina (female, late 30’s), Trevor (male, late 30’s)

An Airbnb rental cottage.  A quaint little living area, with a TV next to a table and two chairs.  Trevor stands looking through the home’s DVD collection, on a shelf behind the chairs.  Martina squats down and opens the cabinet of the TV stand:

MARTINA

Found some games!

TREVOR

Nice.  What do they have?

MARTINA

Looks like…

Jenga

Cranium

Chess

Clue

Monopoly Spongebob Edition

LIFE

Any of those sound appealing?

TREVOR

Uh

Most of them aren’t two player.  And the ones we can I don’t know how.

...

Isn’t LIFE a magazine?

MARTINA

It was.  It’s a game too. 

TREVOR

Never heard of it.

MARTINA

It’s pretty well known.

TREVOR

You’ve played it?

MARTINA

As a kid.

TREVOR

What do you do?

MARTINA

Uh...you just kind of live life. 

Trevor, confused, slides out the game and opens it on the table, looking at the board, the cards, the pieces:

TREVOR

Oh

So you like actually live life.

MARTINA

Yeah.  You spin and you move the little car and follow the—

TREVOR

What are those little pegs?

MARTINA

Those go on the car.  For when you get married and have kids.

TREVOR

You have to?  

MARTINA

Pretty sure...

TREVOR

And the boys are in blue and the girls are in pink?

MARTINA

Yeah.

TREVOR

So how do you win?

MARTINA

By having the most money at the end.  I think.

TREVOR

Wow.

A lot of messed up messaging in there.

MARTINA

It’s dated for sure.

TREVOR

How could people play this?  It’s like...the least accurate depiction of life ever.

MARTINA

Well but I mean it’s—it’s sort of the American dream.

TREVOR

American dream?  This is a lie!  Where’s the work?  The sweat, the trauma?

If this really was “life,” there should be cards like

“Spouse dies in a mass shooting, move back eight spaces.”

“You get your third miscarriage, pay 30 grand for in-vitro.”

“Recession terminates your job, drive Lyft to keep your kids fed.”

Isn’t that life?  Isn’t that what people should be playing?

MARTINA

No.  The reason people play games is to forget the truth.  Noone with a shitty life wants to play a game about how shitty life is.

TREVOR

So everybody has to jump in the car and get married and have a blue boy and a pink girl and move into some cozy cottage like this and live happily ever after?

MARTINA

Some people want that.

TREVOR

But we don’t.

MARTINA

Right.  So why does it have to be one or the other?

Our life can exist.  That LIFE can exist.  We just don’t have to play it.

Martina boxes up the game and slides it back on the shelf.  She sees something else in the back of the cabinet and reaches to pull it out.  It’s a set of Chinese Checkers:

MARTINA

Oh look!

TREVOR

There we go!  Are you ready to lose?

MARTINA

Are you?

TREVOR

Not gonna.

They go to the table and set up the board:

TREVOR

You know this didn’t come from China, right?

It’s—

MARTINA

German.  

Yeah, I know.

They finish setup and start to play.

END OF PLAY

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