NOTE: This post-WWI poster is the first and almost perfect thing I thought of to use for the scene below. But each has no real bearing on the other, as you'll soon see. Thank'ee.
The setting is the family room of a modest suburban home in Anytown, U.S.A. circa the early 1930s.
Judy and Jimmy Everyman lie prostate on the floor and gaze worshipfully up at the Philco radio/storyteller/neo-Moloch (this was, of course, before Television/Sauron) as it relates the latest thrilling, clamorous episode of "Tom Sinew, American He-Man!".
Shifting uncomfortably nearby in his easy chair in the corner is their father Robert 'Bob' Everyman, who is grimly poring over all the bad news in the evening paper and gingerly turning each page with the same discomfort one might feel if they had to move, say, a tarantula molt by hand from one place to another. A swath of electric light shines down on him and the poisoned pages from the stark reading lamp just behind. Once in a while he sighs and scratches parts of his face and head, and occasionally smiles at his children with a doleful affection. There is a wife/mother but she's somewhere else right now. Feel free to place her in your own imagination - her mother's house/her lover's pied-a-terre/market/soup kitchen/Heaven/Hell/the Palace Theater, wherever. But hark,"Tom Sinew" seems to be wrapping up...
Radio Announcer: Will Tom, along with good Mary Golden and Finch Glass, boy genius, escape a certain swift death from their private plane that was defueled by Tom's mystical arch-nemesis Dr.Li Chong, the Devil of Old China?! Will the one parachute he left behind be enough to float them all to safety?! And will Tom and the gang ever find the fabled treasure island of Bao Daioyu?! Whew! Tune in tomorrow, boys and girls, as-!
Jimmy switches off the radio and hurries with his sister to their Dad's side to fret him with one concern.
Jimmy: Daddy, do you think-?
Judy: Will Tom and his friends be okay?
Jimmy: Yeah, will they? He cuffs Judy on the shoulder for interrupting him. She glares sidelong at him but lets it slide for now.
Bob lays down his paper and looks blankly at his waiting children.
Bob (very softly): I-I don't know, my dears. His cups his face with his hands and starts to weep. I don't know!
Judy and Jimmy suddenly burst into tears and scramble into their father's lap.
Bob: I don't know! I don't know! I don't know!
SCENE
DB/2015
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