(GK: Garrison Keillor; SS: Sue Scott: TR: Tim Russell, FN: Fred Newman; RD: Rich Dworsky)
GK: ...brought to you by the Catchup Advisory Board.
TR: These are the good years for Barb and me. The kids have left town, evidently, and so the police are no longer cruising up and down the street looking for them. The upstairs toilet stopped running after I got the dead squirrel out of the tank, and after six months the art finally downloaded on my computer so I can use it again. We discovered a way to discourage telemarketers by putting the phone up to a speaker and playing Led Zeppelin at top volume. And then one day I came home from work to find Barb still in her p.j.'s and drinking what she thought was a ginseng drink but actually was rum. ---- Barb? What's wrong?
SS: Nothing. Just depressed. You go enjoy the dinner I fixed and I'll go look for the barbiturates.
TR: Barb, honey, what's wrong?
SS: Just feeling ugly, overweight, sexually inadequate, a hopeless parent, stupid, tasteless. And it's February. And I have really bad hair. Other than that, no problem.
TR: But what can I do to help, Barb?
SS: Jim, I need something to look forward to. Like a cruise.
TR: A cruise? But that costs an arm and a leg----- how about we take a bus to Spokane instead?
SS: I want to take a cruise to Hawaii and Samoa and the Fiji Islands and Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and have a penthouse cabin on the Sky Deck with a balcony and I'd sit there in my size 4 Spandex and read Jane Austen as the waves crash and every evening at 6 a steward in a white uniform would bring us a tray of appetizers and some of these wonderful ginseng drinks.
TR: We'd bankrupt ourselves, Barb. We'd have to live in the backseat of our car and take sponge baths at gas stations and live off canned pop and Swizzlers.
SS: I realize that. But at least we'd have three months of grace and elegance before we become homeless.
TR: Barb, I think maybe you haven't been getting enough catchup. Catchup has natural mellowing agents that help assuage feelings of inadequacy.
SS: Really?
TR: C'mon, put on your robe and slippers, and I'll rustle you up some ketchup 'n eggs.
SS: Oh, Jim.
RD: These are the good years, music in your soul,
Everything flowing, natural and whole,
Flowing like ketchup on your Shrimp Creole.
GK: Ketchup. For the good times.
RD: Ketchup....ketchup....ketchup.
© Garrison Keillor 2002