Episode 1, Scene 1
Setting: A modest basement apartment in downtown Nazareth; the year is 8 A.D. Mary and Joseph are having lunch in the breakfast nook.
Mary: “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to spend more time with your son.”
Joseph: “My son? Do you really want to go there, Mary? Do you?”
Mary: “OK, fine. But he’s starving for your attention, Joseph. He looks up to you. Can’t you see that?”
Joseph: “Yes, I see that. But let’s be honest, he’s an odd kid. Always in his room working on magic tricks. Yesterday he tried to turn olive oil into honey paste. Good luck the next time you vacuum in there, by the way. And last week I found him in the alley behind the Mandelbaum’s house. He had taken a dead rat out of the dumpster and was trying to bring it back to life. I mean, what sort of kid does crazy shit like that?”
Mary: “A kid whose dad doesn’t take him fishing or to a chariot race now and then, that’s who! A kid whose father spends every waking hour holed up in a workshop making rolltop desks and fancy end tables that no one wants to buy! Look around this place, for God’s sake! We’re up to our ankles in sawdust and wood shavings. They’re in our food, in our clothes, in our hair, they’re everywhere!”
Joseph: “I’m a carpenter, Mary. You knew that when you married me.”
Mary: “And you know that a child needs two caring parents.”
Joseph: “But he’s so hard to have a conversation with. He talks to me like he’s the parent and I’m the child. This morning he walks up to me while I’m brushing my teeth and announces, ‘Blessed are the mild-mannered, because they are absolutely, positively going to inherit the earth.’ And I say, ‘Are you nuts, Jay? Have you heard of Herod? What planet do you live on?’ He responds, ‘Dad, I’m still working on the wording. It’s part of a set.’ His teacher claims that he does stuff like this all the time, and that the other kids think he’s beyond weird.”
Mary: “All the more reason you should be spending quality time with him. Help him understand that people don’t like to be lectured.”
Joseph: “The way you’re lecturing me right now?”
Mary: “Bite me. Sometimes I wonder why I married you.”
Joseph: “I think you know why, Little Miss Uh-Oh, Who’s Going to Believe Me?”
Mary: “That’s incredibly cruel, Joseph.”
Joseph: “And incredibly true, as you know. I took a bullet for the team, Mary.”
Mary: “But you won’t take one for our son and be there for him?”
Joseph: “That’s not fair. Did he tell you I discovered him at 2:00 a.m. using our oven to bake something he called ‘communion wafers’?”
Mary: “What are communion wafers?
Joseph: “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
Jesus runs into the room, cradling a squirming rodent in his hands.
Jesus: “Mom! Dad! Guess what I just did!”