The Year is 1979…

ME:  Now I lay me down to sleep.  I pray the Lord to… to… to make me a successful playwright!!

JESUS: Who goes there?

ME:  It’s me, dear Jesus, having just arrived in the Big Apple and wanting success so bad I can taste it!

JESUS:  Last time I heard from you, you wanted to be the King of Buffalo Dinner Theatre.  That wasn’t enough?

ME:  Well, the thing is, I was just a kid then.  I’m really focused now and I can tell you exactly what I want in great detail!  What I want now is my own artistic home.  A theatre that will take me to its bosom and produce my plays.  An artistic director so colorful and bombastic he should be a play character all by himself.  A fellow who, with every play idea I mention, will giddily respond, “We’re sittin’ on gold!”

JESUS:  I think I’ve got the guy.  Loves Sophia Loren and Siamese Twins.

ME:  Fine.  But this theatre, it shouldn’t be in the noisy, smelly city.  It should be in the country where the cow manure roams free.  It should be a theatre in graceful, bucolic surroundings.  Perhaps housed in an old wooden, an old wooden – well, you’ll think of something.  And there should be trees for me to sleep under while I’m pretending to rewrite.  And if I ever get married (to a Christian, thank you very much!) they should feel sorry for my wife and let her run the lights and sound for my shows.  And since this idyllic country theatre will be set in an Upstate New York farm setting, could it please be named after some sort of arctic bird?

JESUS:  It’s a tall order…

ME:  Jeepers!  If I had all this I’d be so happy, and I’d write plays about you!

JESUS:  Granted!

ME: What?

JESUS:  You heard me.

ME: My wish?  All of it?

JESUS:  Ask and ye shall receive.

ME:  Jesus, you’re the best!

JESUS:  I know, right?  I’ll see you upstate in thirty years.

ME:  (Spit take!) Cough-sputter—What?!  Thirty years?  But I want it all now!

JESUS:  Then maybe you should have bothered to sit your sorry ass in church once in a while.

TOM:  But I –

JESUS: Thank you.  Next.