SMALL WORLD by Conrad A. Panganiban
Cast:
MARY BLAIR, over-the-top Disney fanantic
WORLD FAMOUS HARPER YURABELCHER, overworked administrator of the San Francisco City Permitting Office
Setting: Inside the San Francisco City Permitting Office
HARPER
I’m sorry, Ms. Blair, I’m not able to able to approve your application to build a life-sized It’s a Small World Attraction in your apartment.
MARY
That’s that’s that’s discrimination!
HARPER
No. It’s impossible.
MARY
It’s a Small World is based on CONQUERING all impossibilities!
HARPER
It’s impossible because you live in a studio apartment in Chinatown.
MARY
It’s DISCRIMINATION because I LIVE in Chinatown.
HARPER
I don’t care if you lived in a one-bedroom in the Outer Richmond, a victorian in Noe Valley, or in a mansion in Pacific Heights.
MARY
What do you have against having an imagination, other than the fact that you you YOU don’t have one!
HARPER
You’ll need a 84,000 square foot imagination, the real size of the ride, if it’s going to fit in your 138 square foot apartment.
MARY
Didn’t you see the layers in my design?
HARPER
You can layer the whole building and it still wouldn’t be big enough.
MARY
But imagine the joy the song will bring to The City when everyone hears it out the windows.
HARPER
Not when your application says that you’ll be playing it 24 hours a day for 365 days a year.
MARY
That’s 525 thousand 600 minutes of continuous joy!
(The office phone rings to the tone of It’s a Small World.)
HARPER
Excuse me.
Thank you for calling the San Francisco City Permitting Office. This is Harper Yurabelcher. Can you please hold?
MARY
I’m sorry, are you THE Harper Yurabelcher?
HARPER
If you make fun of my name, I’m ripping up this application.
MARY
I’d never make fun of the WORLD FAMOUS Harper Yurabelcher.
HARPER
World Famous?
MARY
In 1992, a 10-year old Harper Yurabelcher set the world record for riding Disneyland’s It’s a Small World 163 times.
HARPER
It would have been 164 if they didn’t drag me off.
MARY
Is that when you started hating the Small World?
HARPER
They killed my dream of riding it a thousand times in a row. Then they blacklisted me from every Disney Park.
MARY
I remember when you tried to sneak into Tokyo Disney wearing a Michael Jackson Captain EO costume.
HARPER
I even adopted a Bubbles the Chimp look-alike to bring in with me.
MARY
You know, if that application gets approved, you can make that thousand-ride-dream come true?
HARPER
Listening to that song gets me so high.
MARY
Is that why your ringtone…?
HARPER
Ohhhhhhhh yeahhhhhhh!
MARY
Who knew that I’d meet the World Famous Harper Yurabelcher here in San Francisco?
HARPER
It’s a Small World after all.
(HARPER holds up the application and stamps it.)
HARPER (CONT.)
Approved.
BLACKOUT