Monologue
(free for students & auditions)

"Harry Driving His Car"
from the comedy "Fantasia For String Trio"

By G. L. Horton
copyright © 1999 Geralyn Horton

Harry Harmony, a divorced man with two young sons from his first wife, Beverly, and an infant daughter with his present wife, Sharon, reflects on life and love as he rushes to pick up his sons and drive them to Summer Camp.

DRIVING The CAR: from "Fantasia for String Trio"

HARRY STARTS CAR, MIMES DRIVING

God, a getaway!
A harem!  A harem must be pure hell!
To just get in the car and go.
Freedom.
The American dream; a car and the open road--
   (swerves)
Lookout, asshole!
A little less free, Silverbird, fella.
After all, we're chauffeuring the kids to camp.
Easy does it.
They're gonna have a great time.
They'd better, what it costs.
Where does Jim get that stuff, he'd rather hang out and play Diablo?!
I should be the one going to camp.
Wouldn't that be something!
I hear they have them for grown-ups now.
Well: Club Med.
Like that? Like that would be awful!
Camp was another world, nothing but guys,
That was the point of it. Pride.
They  had lots stuff,  sports,  so you didn't have to  be  a baseball whizz, or basketball.
I got my medal for archery.  Archery! But it made me proud.
No worries, no nagging, nobody cared if you matched your socks, or washed your hair, or stayed dry.
I never brush my teeth till the morning before we go home!
God, I hope the boys don't!
Jack had three cavities last month.
Forty seven bucks a pop.
If Jack doesn't shape up he'll have a mouth
like Kevin Carrington's, all mossy stumps;
What was that song we had about him?
" Green Sixteen, he'll never get kissed!"
Cruddy Kevin! What a loser!
Last place in five separate events in the Camp Olympics!
Come to think of it, at Reunion, Kevin had teeth. White teeth.
They looked real, even.  Natural.
Must've set him back a fortune.
Probably did it for his wife. Good looking woman he married.
Well, more power to him.  We had a lot of fun with old Crud.
The time we sawed through the rope on his upper bunk.
Or the rubber snake in his mess kit.
But the best one was the pollywogs in his sneakers!
Did he squeal!
Counselor told him he ought to wear socks!
Can you beat that?
"hey, I got my toes all full of squished tadpoles!"
"Well, kid, why don't you wear socks!"
I hope his wife's got a sense of humor.
Most women don't.
Camp Quichee's co-ed, now. I hope that hasn't ruined it.
They must have to crack down, with them right there on top of the boys instead of across the lake at Pocahantus.
Pocahantus.  Land of dreams.
We used to float stuff across to the girl's side, bottles with obscene messages,
A rubber snake.
And listen for the screams.
Then there was the time we put pillows in the bunk for bed check and hiked around the lake in the dark.
Russ and Cruddy and me.
We found the girls' bath house and whittled out a peek hole
And then waited for one of them to get up and come pee.
We waited and waited.
Cruddy  wanted to take a chance and sneak inside to see what  was written on the walls,
but I said he'd get us all caught.
So  we  waited.  And told each other every dirty joke  we'd  heard From first grade on,
and  tried not to laugh out loud,  which wasn't hard
Since  we'd heard all the jokes before.
Then Cruddy fell asleep, and then Russ,
and then both my legs.
Then it was just about dawn when
Rustle, rustle,  one of them was coming!
Coming right up the path now! I shook Cruddy,
The one, she was almost in sight now she was
My God she was a Counselor!
A counselor!  They'd found us out!
Run like hell! Jesus legs, run!
It wasn't till I was a married man with a child of my own
that it occurred to me:
Even a Counselor might have to pee.

It's a great mystery, it really is.
The opposite sex is a foreign country.
If anything, today it's harder.
You have one next to you playing shortstop,
you get to think you know what they're after:
But what they're after's you!
The old rules were like diplomatic relations,
substitute for war.

I don't like the sound of your engine, Silverbird.
You could use a tune-up.
More than a hundred and fifty bucks, that’ll be.
More than I paid for my first Chevy.
I ought to tune you myself, Big Fella.
I used to.
Can't be that much harder, in twenty years.
Takes tools, though.  Metric tools.
Hell, I used to take the engine apart with a couple of wrenches.
When I got it back together,
I'd drive around and impress girls.
Girls must have been easier to impress, back then.

Made on an by .