Worry Womb script
Saturday, January 28, 2006
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Garrison Keillor: If you feel that your life is more and more full of stress.

Sue Scott (REVERB, INTERIOR): What's wrong at work? Why do they avoid me? Am I going to lose my job? What if interest rates go up? I've had this mole for three years now...Did I leave the iron on? (FADING) What am I supposed to do? Who can I turn to? Is there a book about this?

GK: Your friends aren't interested in hearing about this. Self-help books don't help. Therapy is expensive and probably isn't covered by your health plan. Anti-depressants have side effects.

SS: What can I do? (FN ECHO)

GK: What you need is a Worry Womb, the natural holistic way to relieve stress. It's a sort of sleeping bag and you crawl inside and (SLOSHING AND SLUICING) you're aware of water coursing through the walls of the bag and the temperature is an infantile 98.6 degrees and there's a heartbeat (HEARTBEAT) and you feel warm and happy and you're surrounded by a choir (GLEE CLUB HUMMING A CHORD) and the warm fluids are flowing around you and you're inside the mother ship and the choir is singing your name (CHOIR SINGS: SUZANNE, SUZANNE, SUZANNE) and you're floating and you're secure, you are loved, you feel wanted, you are blissfully happy. Thanks to bioengineering and the unique comfort of the key of A flat, you feel better than you've felt in years. The problem is getting out. How do you leave this beautiful warm loving knowing that out there is (SIMULTANEOUS SHOUTING, GUNSHOTS, SWORDFIGHTING) anger and hostility and anxiety? The same way you left the original womb — (SLOW RHYTHMIC MOTIONS, SS PROTESTING IN TEMPO) — the Worry Womb motor gradually pushes you out and out you go (POP, SPLASH, SS CRY OF ALARM) and that's it and when you try to crawl back in (

SS: Please, please, please) the Worry Womb rejects you. But gently.

CHOIR: Sorry. Not now. Maybe later.

GK: Let's face it, life isn't all that good most of the time and there is no shame in curling up and checking out for a while. The Worry Womb from BioMom-dot-com.

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