Sometimes a story doesn’t have a moral. It just sits there, sort of like our family farm turned junkyard, a bunch of burned down trailers, rusting in the rain. This is one of those stories.
Once there was a world that was very, very full. People and plastic and paper galore, they wanted it all, then they wanted some more.
There were factories puffing and oceans that cried, and grown ups who said, “Oh… it’ll be fine!” (They lied.)
Their children grew up with stats in their heads— “No babies for us,” they all rationally said. “We’ve got reusable straws and anxiety meds, a planet to mourn, and careers to be fed.”
But time kept right on ticking along, and soon all the people who told them what’s wrong got very old knees and needed some care, and turned to the kids…But the kids weren’t there.
They waited for help that just never came, saying their pillaging was never to blame, and cursing the poor with a passionate shame. They mocked Medicaid, called food stamps a crutch, while hoarding their huge homes and helicopters and such. They’d drained every well, but still placed the blame on the ones at the bottom, all in Jesus Christ’s name.
And slowly, as seasons slipped silently by, their noise and their numbers began to run dry. The world didn’t end, but it settled, it sighed. The old ways grew brittle. And mostly… they died.
The soil was tired, the rivers ran slow, the jobs had all vanished, the prices still rose. The ones who remained lived quiet and thin, with no big beginnings and no way to win.
UNSCRIPTED 