Here's another free script from the Sketches: Mainly on Sex collection for my youth worker and drama friends.
The piece is titled One More Call and it's a somber monologue from a school administrator about what happens when kids don't look out for each other.
I hope One More Call strikes a chord with you. If so, tell your youth worker and drama-geek friends where to find it, with my compliments.
The text is below. If you like it, download the free script for One More Call, with discussion questions.
Mr. Potter
This is not why I got into education, OK? If I have to call in one more child sex abuse case...
Which is a joke. I’ll make that call before the month is out.
Did you know that 70% of teenage pregnancies are fathered by men over 20? 70%. It’s ridiculous.
Some guy comes along with a car and a part time job and he’s not all pimply and awkward so, what — he makes a girl feel like a woman? And of course he wants her to act like a woman, right? No way! He wants her to act like a girl. He wants her to do whatever he says. He wants oral sex and vaginal sex and whatever kind of sex he can get and he’ll be tender or demanding or whatever it takes to get what he wants. Oh, and he wants to keep it a secret from her parents. Real mature.
Speaking of oral sex, if I have to tell one more parent I just pulled her seventh grade girl off some boy behind the gym...
And the call to the boy’s parent is always a delight. It’s either denial or barely disguised pride. “Not my boy! My boy sings in the choir! If it was my boy, he was tricked by some slut. Not my boy!”
Some parents are OK with that. For their sons, I mean. We depersonalize girls so much. I guess if she’s not your daughter, she’s a piece of meat.
At the Spring Dance? We found a girl in the Boys’ Room, down in the last stall, drunk out of her mind, and a parade of boys going in one after another — actually leaving their dates on the dance floor to go stand in line and have a go at this child.
Lord, she was a mess. Covered with vomit — the floor smeared with it — and semen. And blood. It was awful. And not one boy came and told anybody she was in trouble. Not one. The maintenance guy went in to check the paper towels and realized something was up.
And I’ll tell you what I thought was the bigger betrayal. There were girls who knew she was in there — who saw her go in there and knew she was too drunk to look after herself — they knew. And none of them told anyone either.
The girl — I can’t say her name but it wouldn’t be hard to figure out who she is — the girl survived the alcohol poisoning but she didn’t come back to school. She woke up in the hospital and started piecing together what happened, they had to transfer her to a psychiatric facility. Which is where she stayed, I understand, until the insurance ran out. I don’t know how that will end. Not well, I think.
It was part of the buzz the next Monday at school. Less on Tuesday, though our counselors were starting to see a lot of students. By the end of the week it was a non-event as far as I can tell. There were law suits and expulsions and there won’t be any school-sponsored dances next year. But that lovely little girl — who lived her whole life on the edge of popularity — she just doesn’t exist at this school any more. And that doesn’t work for me. It really doesn’t.
Am I the only one? You tell me? Am I the only one?
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