The Institute for Happy Days
by Terrenzo Wallendo
Characters:
Rupert: Balding, 50ish, wears a brown shirt buttoned up wrong, black glasses, high-top green tennis shoes.
Margarite: Also 50ish. Bleached blond hair that needs washing. Wears a food-service uniform that reaches down to her calves.
Scene: Rupert sits at the counter in a fifty’s-looking diner. Margarite is behind the counter.
Rupert: The door is open. Life is full of possibilities. I am the wind.
Margarite: You are full of wind.
Rupert: What do you mean?
Margarite: You need to get a sense of how the world has changed. How this country has evolved over that last two-hundred and fifty years! How it really is today!
Rupert: What? I thought it was the same country it’s always been. Republicans. Democrats. Farmers. Bankers... The rich; the poor.
Margarite: Oh my god. Are you serious? You seriously think that the politics and the economy of today is the same as it was in Washington and Jefferson’s time? And I guess you think Federalists were the same as the Republicans of today, and the Democrat-Republicans were just like today’s Democratic Party? Heck, in the early to mid-1800’s nearly all of Federal revenue came from tariffs.
Rupert: Well, at least it seems like we’re going back to that… so maybe we are the same?
Margarite: Right… look: you work in a bookstore. Stocking shelves. That’s labor. Soon, all books will be online and there will be no need to hire anyone to just stock shelves!
Rupert: Well, what about you? Food service, that’s labor. They could hire visa workers here for training to do what you do.
Margarite: That’s why I am starting my own scholarly institute.
Rupert: Scholarly...
Margarite: Yep, institute. Don’t you know anything? Let’s take a broad look at how American politics and the economy has evolved over the last two-hundred and fifty years: First, everybody was a farmer: Washington was a farmer, Jefferson was a farmer, though he did take a shot at operating a nail factory but the slaves weren’t so good at making nails and Jefferson wasn’t so great as a businessman. And then in the 1800’s, we got into manufacturing: railroads…
Rupert: Wow, for an uneducated counter-attendant in a lower-class, dregs-of-society diner, I don’t think you really know anything at all about politics and the economy in this country!
Margarite: The telegraph, radio, cars... And by the time of World War I, this country was the world’s number one manufacturing center.
Rupert: Nothing like manufacturing to make a working man proud.
Margarite: But then, with the advent of computers, information technology, more and more automation, over the course of the 20th century we developed a much more service oriented economy.
Rupert: Sure. Like you waiting on customers here. And hair dressers and barmaids. The service industry – though service is pretty poor here sometimes.
Margarite: No you idiot. Education is a service. Health care is a service. International finance is a service, highly dependent of the stability of the U.S. dollar. And the internet is a service. AI is a service.
Rupert: Well, stocking shelves in a book store is a service.
Margarite: But all of this service leads to the next kind of economy: the institute economy.
Rupert: Mind boggling.
Margarite: Institutes today and in the future can solve all of our problems. And all you need to form an institute is a large donation from some crooked rich guy and a few great quotes from Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and a few other quotes from John Maynard Keynes just to make fun of him.
Rupert: What about quotes from The Fonze? “Aaayyy!”
Margarite: Who?
Rupert: You know, the hip dude from “Happy Days”.
Margarite: Okay, so the Fonze can be your economic founding father. But to form your institute you will also have to develop a talent for using the Straw Man Argument.
Rupert: Straw Man says: “I’m cool, you’re not.”
Margarite: And you’ll have to develop a knack for taking a sentence or even just a couple of words from people’s comments out of context so it means something quite different from what the person actually meant.
Rupert: Take this out of context: “Sit on it!”
Margarite: And you also have to make use of epithets and scandalous claims about whoever or whatever it is you are attacking.
Rupert: “Why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier?”
Margarite: And you always carry on as though you are a hundred percent correct regardless of how wrong you might be.
Rupert: “Correctamundo!” So what do you intend to call your institute?
Margarite: I am thinking seriously about calling my institute “The Institute for Workplace Thrills and Enervation in America.|” But I’m not sure what that really means. Or “The Institute that Cares about Handicapped Persons as Long as They Don’t Bother Us?” But then I am from Potosi, Missouri originally so I might call it “The Potosi Institute for People Who Can’t Read Very Well and Can Be Easily Sucked In.” Or maybe I’ll name if after that Marshall Tucker song and call it “The Institute of Desert Skies”.
Rupert: That last one would be good if want to attack urban living. Evocative too.
Margarite: And you want to carry on a lot about peoples’ rights like…
Rupert: The right to fart.
Margarite: Well, maybe but I’ll talk about labor rights from the point of view of wealthy bankers. Or the rights of people in a surveillance state from the point of view of wealthy Russian oligarchs who contribute large sums to corrupt politicians at all levels of American government. Or maybe I’ll just defend the rights of people who imitate how roosters move when they’re upset or horny.
Rupert: Rooster moves. Yeah!
Margarite: So tell me Rupert, what would like to call your institute?
Rupert: There’s only one logical choice for me: “The Institute for Happy Days”. “Aaayyy!”
End of Scene