No Christmas Skits This Year––Just Brotherly Blunders

By Steve Eskew

Grrrr! On our very first day at New York’s Golden Oldies Senior Center, my shamefully rivalrous brother Reggie mortified me in a game of charades. And I had so wanted to impress these trendy seniors––mostly “Swifties.” 

Reggie had written down one of humankind’s most asinine phrases for me to usher in my pantomime debut. 

Reggie gloated with glee when he saw my face fall as I read my mime phrase: “Ice Cream Has No Bones.”

“Curses!,” said I in an undertone, then went on to make the audience laugh heartily at my humiliating attempt to mime that phrase.

As zealous/jealous siblings, we’ve always delighted in getting each other’s goat in public. Never mean-spirited. But, unscathed by age, we’re more merciless than ever. 

Thankfully the other seniors seem to relish witnessing the amicable wisecracks of us bantering brothers.

Good thing they dig us cool cats. I’ll definitely need that captive audience to be chipper this holiday season. The head honcho of the center has made me the head writer of the center’s holiday entertainment. 

The only rule is that I can’t have any references to Christmas, lest members of other religions feel slighted. 

What to do, what to do? Wait a minute––miraculous epiphany! I’ll satirize my brother’s buffoonery in a series of comic vignettes.

 

Recruiting talented seniors for acting out his asininities was a snap. Daring and devilish, these old whippersnappers are still running strong. 

Acting is a safe form of fun for them. Some have learned the hard way that they’d best swear off bungee jumping, pogo sticking, cartwheeling, skateboarding and psychedelic mushrooming.

Imagine Reggie’s horror when I announced that skits would be based on my brother’s kookie quirks. As the crowd cheered my decision, a tense twitch fetched up on Reggie’s face. 

“Your Christmas goose is cooked, dude” I said sweetly. “And I’m the guy who’s gonna serve it.”

The show for the Golden Oldies will run next week. Meanwhile, we’ve been performing the skits for other local senior centers––sort of our out-of-town tryouts.

Much to Reggie’s chagrin, I promised him faithfully that I would include a scene dealing with his excessively grassy armpits. I had instantly emasculated him once by a crack I made when he wore a tank top to show off his muscles. 

Recalling Madonna’s rebellion against the patriarchal notion of women’s shaving their underarms, I piped up with “Doood! Forget your muscles, give those pits a trim. You’re beginning to look like Madonna.”

Adding to the fun, the senior playing Reggie at his present age has sagging muscles that accentuate his un-groovy mound of underarm hair.

Well, ya really gotta be there. 

I wrote a skit that includes Reggie’s wont for giggling every time he hands a cashier pennies. Since that’s a typical senior trait, the audience saw themselves and they too got the giggles.

Reggie remains pure gold for giving clichéd excuses when he wrecks his car. For example, when he was younger, it was always “I sneezed and lost control;” now, it’s the tired old senior defense of “I got the break mixed up with the accelerator” –– used ad nauseam nowadays by naughty but hip seniors who texts while they drive.

In the skit, Reggie’s’s wife cites his wreck record and begs him to stop driving, if for no other reason but to take heed to a point made by his hero Tommy Smothers in a recent quip:

“When I die, I wanna go just like my grandpa––in my sleep––and not die in stark terror like the other people in the car he was driving.” 

(Tommy was always Regge’s hero because “Mom always liked [his brother] Best!”). 

I’ve built a skit directly from Reggie’s playbook about his insensitive reactions when his wife was going through menopause. 

In the skit, a male character actually thinks he’s helping when he presents his wife with an anniversary gift, meant to control her bloat, plus a hint that she has developed a face-grooming issue.

The gift? Sort of a twofer: a Lean Cuisine/hot-wax mustache-remover combo. I smell divorce!

In another skit, a gaggle of geezers mock Reggie’s habit of texting on his cell phone as they walk down a busy NYC street as horns honk. After they exit, there come screams, a collective thud and a siren. 

The skits have been extremely well received at all of the other centers. By next week they’ll be ready for prime time and performed at our own beloved center.

You’d think Reggie would be thankful. At least, I avoided mocking his many awkward sexual moments. But today, when we played charades, the ungrateful brat hideously avenged me by insisting I pantomime the following phrase: “The loony  Senator clearly has bats in his belfry.” 

I was wearing my Santa cap. After I thoroughly bungled miming that impossible phrase, Reggie ran over and replaced my Santa hat with a dunce cap.

No wonder Mom always liked me best.