I Got Into a Silly Mood One Day ...

I got into a silly mood one day, and decided to write some dialog.  An exchange between a store employee and an eccentric, dimwitted customer offered a good chance for some funny writing.

Scene:  The Paint Department of a big ticket hardware store (think Home Depot).

A large 60’ish woman enters, looking around for someone who can help her.  She is neatly dressed in a red polyester pantsuit.  Her bottle-blonde hair is done in a large bouffant and is so heavily sprayed that a hurricane wouldn’t blow it out of shape.  She has long nails, painted red with gold spangle dragons on each finger.  Her voice is a combination of Fran Drescher and Lena Lamont (the dumb blonde movie star in “Singin’ in the Rain”).

She sees a young male store employee and signals to him.  He is about 21 years old, tall and lithe, with wavy brown hair.

WOMAN:  Hello!  Do you work here?

EMPLOYEE:  They pay me every week, so I guess so.  What do you need?

WOMAN:  You’re not sure if you work here?  You’re dressed like you work here, so I thought you worked here.

EMPLOYEE:  I work here.

WOMAN:  Why didn’t you say so?

EMPLOYEE:  Sorry.  What can I do for you?

WOMAN:  I’m turning my walk-in closet into a coffee room and I need some paint.

EMPLOYEE:  A coffee room?

WOMAN:  Yeah.  You know.  Like a tea room, only for coffee.

EMPLOYEE:  A room for drinking coffee?

 

WOMAN:  For drinking coffee and eating where nobody can see you, so they don’t know you’re eating and drinking coffee and don’t drag you to a detox program like they did to my aunt, which made her have a stroke from the shame.  I don’t want to get a stroke from shame.

EMPLOYEE:  I don’t blame you, Lady.  You said you need paint?

WOMAN:  Yeah.  Just a minute.  (She fishes in her purse and pulls out a sandwich bag containing a piece of fruit, which she hands to the employee.)  There.

EMPLOYEE:  What’s this?

WOMAN:  A pomegranate.

EMPLOYEE:  I can see that.  What’s it for?

WOMAN:  That’s the color I want my coffee room to be.

EMPLOYEE:  We can’t mix anything that looks like this.  This is streaked with a few different shades.

WOMAN:  You can’t make a paint that will go on the wall like that?

EMPLOYEE (laughing):  Lady, you would have to hire Michelangelo to paint a wall like that.

WOMAN:  Is he available?

EMPLOYEE (looking askance):  He’s dead.

WOMAN:  Oh.  Well, then, can you match the color in the center of that one streak there?

EMPLOYEE:  Which one?

WOMAN:  That little one there.

EMPLOYEE: I can hardly see it.

WOMAN (touching the fruit with the tip of a fingernail):  There.  That streak.  I like that streak better than the other streaks.

EMPLOYEE:  Whatever you say.  I’ll give this to the guy who mixes the paints and see what he can do.  I’ll just mark where your favorite streak is.  (Takes out a black marker pen and starts to draw an arrow on the fruit)

WOMAN:  Will I be able to eat it after you mark it up like that?

EMPLOYEE:  You want to eat this or you want to give it to the guy to match the color?  You can’t do both, Lady.

WOMAN:  What if I just eat around my streak, and you give the guy the piece that’s left.

EMPLOYEE:  Uh … he won’t touch it if you do that.  He has Saliva-Hydro-Phobia.

WOMAN (not wanting to admit that she doesn’t know what Saliva-Hydro-Phobia might be):  Well … okay.  I don’t like pomegranates, anyway.  I just heard that they can remove wrinkles, like Botox, only without needles.

EMPLOYEE:  Okay, so … you really want this color?

WOMAN:  It’s a good color.  I’m going to call the room the Pomegranate Room.

EMPLOYEE:  Why not the Coffee Room?

WOMAN:  Everybody has a place to drink coffee.  Nobody has a Pomegranate Room.

EMPLOYEE:  Okay.  Give me a minute and I’ll go ask the guy who mixes the paints if he can match this.  I’ll be right back.

(EMPLOYEE leaves, taking the fruit with him.)

WOMAN (to herself):  Michelangelo died?  I thought he just got married to Paris Hilton.