YOUR LOVING GRANDSON, REGINALD

                              # 27 in a series of daily one-act, one scene plays

[ACT I, Scene I: an elderly couple, Helen and Thomas, sit in the living room of their well-to-do home. Thomas reads the paper while Helen opens the mail]


HELEN: Oh, Thomas, we've received a letter from Reginald!

THOMAS [without looking up from the newspaper]: What does the boy have to say this time?

HELEN: Here, I'll read it to you:
Dearest Grandmother, I hope this letter finds you and Grandfather in good health. I look ever so forward to you and Grandfather's visit, but I feel I must relate the events of the past few months prior to your arrival. The good news is I have my driver's license, the bad news is I have been terribly ill.


HELEN [gasps, composes herself and continues letter]:
Mother has fetched the doctor for me after I was found facedown and unconscious in a rowboat on the goldfish pond, drifting throughout the early morn. I had finished off a bottle of cooking sherry, you see. I had drank the entire bottle because earlier I had emptied out father's bar, as well as Jarvis's emergency brandy; all this within under a week.

THOMAS: Takes after his father.

HELEN: Shush. [continues reading letter]:
              You'll be pleased to know I'm doing much better now. The doctor has declared me dissipated, but not entirely debauched.
      Now, as per your wish to visit the zoo as we did in my childhood, I feel I must inform you of the events that have recently transpired. As for visiting the zoo, that is out of the question. To be frank: I stabbed, with a pen knife, a flashy cockatoo that had forgotten himself. I won't repeat what he said to me, but suffice to say I was in the right defending my honor against the bird. After I'd realized what I had done, I fled the avarium in the quickest manner possible without looking back. As I write, I don't know if the creature's yet dead or alive. From there, I hastily hopped the enclosure into the lemur sanctuary.
         Last Saturday's edition of the paper interviewed the lemur handler, and he stated that the tiny creatures have finally calmed down and no longer bark at the smallest sound. I am relieved, although I cannot get the image of their frightened, staring eyes out of my mind from when I tried to dance the foxtrot with three or four of them.
         After talking with the doctor, I now realize my actions were due to three days diet of nothing but gin and molasses. Sadly, no amount of apologizing to the zoo administrator could change the court appointed restraining order against me. As it is, I am allowed into the fenced-in area of the park, but cannot pass through the portcullis turnstile. So if you would like to feed popcorn to the ducks, we can do that, but I'm afraid entering the zoo is simply out of the question. Give grandfather my best and tell him I said thank you for the pen knife he sent on my birthday.
                                                        your loving grandson,
                                                                                                            Reginald


THOMAS: Harrumph.

HELEN: Shush! We're going to visit in a week and you are going to have a nice grandfatherly talk with the boy. It will be delightful!

THOMAS [to self]: Well, I suppose I could teach him how to defend himself, prison can't be far down the road.

HELEN: Simply delightful!

THOMAS: Harrumph.

                                                                   (curtain)