Sheffspeare

[Okay, not poetry but you might like to see it anyway. - Heather]

As you know, Katie and Jay have been going back and forth, trying to make all the plans for the reception on the 23rd of December. I just came across this little write-up that documents some of the things they have been dealing with, and thought I would share it (same thing is also posted in File Cabinet).


Scene: A small town in Missouri

(enter Katie)
2-3 or not 2-3. That is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the end to take the date of December 23, to suffer the sleets and snowstorms of outrageous weather, and in so doing, risk the heartache that no one makes it to the reception, or to take a chance that this family will suffer a thousand natural disasters for food. To come to eat; to eat? perchance to drink. Aye, there’s the grub. Yet for that chance to eat, what relatives may come when we have Sheffield off this marital coil must give us pause. (exit Katie)

(Witches appear at pot-luck table in the center of the stage)
Double, double, toil and trouble.
Web site stir, fake champagne bubble.
Cutlet fry and Fri-Chik bake.
Label meat at potluck—STEAK!
Eye of Oetman, website blog,
Loma Linda veggie dog.
Microwave on highest heat.
Big Frank, Choplet…horrors—meat!

Burger? Burger most foul! This was the most unkindest cutlet of all. (exit witches)

(off-stage, sounds of Katie musing on the phone about the stores she’s registering at)
Get thee to a registry... Filene’s, Loehmann’s, country music. Lend me your Sears card. How much unlike art they from Neiman-Marcus. Alas, poor Target. I knew it well: good sweets, nice prints. Many flights of stairs to bring thee to the restroom. There max a Barnes and Noble card. The rest is silence.

(re-enter Katie). But soft, what might we plan for yonder entertainment? Come, Jay. Come night. Come thou Jay—at night, we’ll play a game of Uno. Uno, Uno, wherefore is the Uno? To play, to play’s the thing:

All the world is Rage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their Change Rages and their Wilds,
And one man in his time plays many cards,
At first the hopeful bid, sneaking a furtive look at promising cards.
And then the trump gets changed.
And then the woeful Out Rage card, sudden and quick in appearance when the hand was almost won.
And then Aunt Janet, full of wise cracks and determined to beat Uncle Lawrence.
And so she plays her card.
The last round of all that ends this strange, eventful game, a second chance and then mere oblivion—you play with trembling a high 15, well saved. And someone plays a Wild, leaving you sans hope, sans cards, sans points--a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets an hour playing Rage but will play no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying 45 to nothing. (exit Katie)

(enter Chorus) If you, Sheffield, are offended,
Think but this and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.

(re-enter Katie) And yet, I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive nor his heart to report, what my dream was.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind. Thy tooth is not so keen as the hungry tooth of relatives unseen. Two-three or not two-three? December 23 it shall now be. Whence? Oet, Oetman spot. Holland's well that ends well.

Chorus
Well said, my Katie. ‘Tis the mind that makes the body rich. And so shall it be so for Katherine. This is a Jay more precious than the lark.

Blessed be this marriage, this walking down the aisle, this happy Katherine Eden, demi-paradise, this fortress built by Nature for herself, this little world, this precious stone set in a silver ring, this blessed couple, this Jay, this home, these Oetmans.

… Now let the marriage feast begin.