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Overthinking It
Scene, on a hill in a field we see a car. A GUY and a GIRL laying on the hood, stargazing. After a moment passes, the GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE steps out from behind the car, paces a bit, rolling his shoulder.
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Man oh man, if she keeps lying there like that my shoulder is going to fall asleep. I should say something. There’s no way I’m going to say something; if I do she might move. If you lose circulation doesn’t the limb die eventually? If I don’t move I’m probably going to get shoulder gangrene or something. I can leave it a little longer though. Probably.
GIRL: “It’s so peaceful out here.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Yeah, peaceful. Look at this field though; perfect place for a tank battle. Let’s say I’m coming in from over there, which would mean the German lines are that way. Now, the Nazi, if he’s a wily Nazi, he’s going to have emplaced anti-tank guns…. there. My best bet would be to take ’em out with air strikes or artillery before I even get here, but let’s assume that’s not an option. Then how would I dig him out… tricky. But not tricky enough! What that kraut doesn’t realize is that I’ve snuck men around behind him!
GUY: *Chuckles*
GIRL: “What?”
GUY: “Uh, nothing.”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE (emerging from behind the car): “Is he laughing at me? He’d better not be laughing at me. He doesn’t know who he’s messing with. I don’t need him; I could have gone out with any guy on the team. Suzie told me so. Of course, you can’t trust Suzie; she’s always scheming. The little minx. What if she manipulated me into this date? What if she’s setting me up for failure? What if she’s trying to get me out of the way so she can make a play for Kurt?”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “I’ll need some infantry to assault that bunker. Of course, it’s going to be tricky getting them through the minefield. I hope casualties are light…”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “I bet that’s it. I bet she set this up. I bet she arranged things with this guy just to humiliate me! Ooh, she makes me so mad.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “And then we unleash the atom bombs! Wait, she’s tensing up. What’s going on here?”
GUY: “Uh, you okay?”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “I mustn’t let him know that I’ve figured it out!”
GIRL: “Yeah, I’m fine. Just need to adjust a little.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “She shifting! Gotta move that shoulder quick before shoulder gangrene sets in.”
GIRL: “There.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “She’s settled down again. I don’t think that was enough, I’m probably still doomed. Alas, poor shoulder, I knew thee.”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Success! He suspects nothing. Maybe it wasn’t Suzie setting me up, maybe Jenna is behind this. It would be just like her. Why, she said to me just the other day ‘I love you in that top!’ What a fake.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Something’s not going right here. I thought chicks dug this stargazing stuff. Is she bored? Maybe that’s because she doesn’t know enough about this stuff. I can fix that.”
GUY: “That constellation right there? That’s Scorpio.”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Is he lecturing now? What makes him think that’s a good idea?”
GUY: “And over here we have Draco.”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Maybe I can put him off of it.”
GIRL “It looks like roadkill.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “It’s working! This girl is funny.”
GUY: “And that star’s Betelgeuse. That’s the star the aliens came from in the movie…”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “That was such a stupid movie. I can’t understand why anyone would watch it.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “That was such a great movie. Hey, it generated this primo meme; I bet she’d love to hear about it. Just how do I verbalize a gif?”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Wait, did you just pronounce it ‘jif?'”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Yeah; that’s how it’s pronounced.”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “It’s a graphical interchange format, not a giraffical interchange format.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Don’t be a gackass.”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Look, the guy who invented the thing says…”
GIRL snuggles closer and emits a happy sigh.
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Hah! See that! The astronomy description was what she needed. Man oh man am I smooth.”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Seriously?! You think it’s the star chart that’s working here? You really are a moron.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Oh, like you’re helping things along.”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “You were about to describe a gif!”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Hey, at least I pronounce it right.”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “You pronounce it like peanut butter.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Okay, dropping the subject. It’s not important.”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “And what were you thinking with that tank battle? Seriously?”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “At least I wasn’t the one bringing Girl Drama into this.”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Those girls are important!”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: *falsetto* “Oooh that Suzie she just makes me soo mad!”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Suzie is a good friend! She’s a better person than you’ll ever be.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Look, it’s obvious this isn’t going to work out. Let’s just go our separate ways and forget this ever happened. Deal?”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Deal.”
GUY kisses GIRL.
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “I’M THE KING OF THE WORLD!!”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “You are such a dork.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “You can’t argue with results.”
GIRL’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Whatever. I’m done here.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “Hey, dude, what are the chances that we’re gonna, you know, get some?”
GUY: “Shut up.”
GIRL: “What?”
GUY: “Not you.”
GUY’S INNER MONOLOGUE: “I’m going to have to write off this shoulder. Worth it.”
Published in Humor
that was fun.
Better than most SNL sketches.
Brilliant!
Fantastic! As I was reading, my inner monologue was telling me how much my 1996 self would have related to this.
I think we’ve all lost a shoulder at one time or another to the love wars. I had a friend who lost both legs in a battle on a couch while watching some chick-flick. But otherwise, his infantry had light casualties and the damned Nazis lost again!
Been there…. done that…. got Her t-shirt.
Once she’s sleeping with you regularly, you’re not willing to lose your legs anymore. They start to fall asleep, you dump her off and you tell her why.
Very funny and well written. Few other physicists have such a flair for romantic comedy!
Low bar.
Nice!
Regarding the tank battle…. A couple of decades ago I found my wife standing in our farmhouse kitchen with a pensive look on her face. I asked what was wrong. She explained that she had just read, in some book she’d found about parenting boys, that young men think of “blowing things up” with what seemed to her to be alarming frequency. It surprised me that, as the mother of five sons, she hadn’t already figured that out.
Then I made the mistake of telling her that, shoot, I thought of blowing things up with similar frequency — that, in fact, hardly a week went by when I didn’t imagine using an M203 grenade launcher (which I do not possess) to launch a grenade into the little broken down barn on the far corner of our twenty acres.
She said something about “living with aliens,” and then started to cry.
Then break wind.
Sorry but your dialogue makes me think of this. I wanna be the little spoon!
Funny
It’s the five boys that did it. I’m surprised my mother made it through three.
But it was intended as a compliment.
Also, you are telling me women don’t think about blowing stuff up?
For the most part, no. That’s one of the wonderful things about women.
Also back about twenty years ago, I was in Chicago for a print industry trade show. I was about 40, and was there with a 28 year old engineer and a 60 year old sales guy. The three of us were hanging out in my hotel room after the show one evening, and the subject turned, somehow, to explosives. We each had our stories: I of making gunpowder and thermite as a kid, the engineer of detonating acetylene balloons, and the sales guy of various pyrotechnic misbehaviors during his Navy days.
Yeah, I’m sure a small percentage of women are into stuff like that. Just like some guys like to pick drapes for the living room windows.
I don’t talk about the consequences of making gunpowder as a kid, but one time, flying back to Miami from the Bahamas, I was looking out at the oil stains on the engine cowling, and somehow I got into a conversation with the guy sitting next to me about fuel-air bombs. It turned out that he actually produced fuel-air bombs and had done the explosives work for the opening scene of a Lethal Weapon movie that started with Riggs and Murtaugh running out of a building that immediately exploded. He explained how each window required two fuel-air bombs, a primary small one to blow out the glass, and then a bigger one to create the explosion and flames going out the window.
We talked about bomb-making the whole trip back. And when we landed and got from our seats, I looked around and saw that all the women seated around us looked at us with terrified expressions. So I don’t talk about bomb-making on planes anymore.
How about “as funny as ‘Kids in the Hall’ when KITH was kickin’ it?”
Wasn’t there some psychology study a few years ago that caused alarm among the muddle-headed adults when children were given an open ended and abstract writing assignment, and all the boys wrote stories of battles and all the girls wrote about relationships.
I thank you for including the vividly recognizable, yet widely unknown constellation of “Roadkill”.
Some may tell you it’s just Draco’s head… but I know four splayed limbs, a long tail, and a tragically grasping right paw when I see one.
There was a computer security expert, he’s taking a long flight, and he’s looking at the little monitor in front of him and thinking “I bet I could hack into that.” He tries it, gets in easily, finds all kinds of worrying things that he could potentially play with. He tweets about his discovery, and gets met by the TSA when his plane lands.
There may have been one or two unwise decisions he made.
I was sitting in the cafeteria one day with a friend. She was terribly upset about something. When I asked what, she said that her daughter had been making black powder, and she was concerned about what her daughter was going to grow up to be.
So I took a poll. There were ten other engineers at the table and I put it to them: how many of you knuckleheads built your first pipe bomb before you had a drivers license?
Every hand went up.
I would be concerned if my daughter was going to grow up to be an engineer too.
I was talking to my cousin and a group of his friends once. One of them said his dad was planning for a Red Dawn scenario, and they found it strange. I think they might have been Commie spies.
Some do. They’re called ‘keepers’.
Yeah, I believe I remember that. Fortunately my story happened before 9/11 when things were more laid back.
Did you know that you can boil kerosene and watch it bubble? It makes an awesome fireball when the metal cap on the glass bottle finally gives out from the pressure. Putting out the farmer’s field wasn’t so much fun though.
I never built a pipe b0mb.
And that explains why I never became an engineer.
But I did consider installing a stripped down .22 to my model of the Forrestal and taking down to the stream, just to see how it would do.
Me neither but I also still have all my limbs.