You Were Lucky – The Liars

Here is a great skit for leaders or students who really like to act and even memorize lines. This one takes a bit of practice because as the two characters feed off of each other’s stories, the exaggeration gets more and more contrived.

We like to use this skit as an opener for discussions focused on telling the truth or being authentic people.

The stage is set with a small dining table with fine glasses, dishes, and candlelight. (Optional stage is a park bench with two old friends reminiscing.)

Supplies:
Table, chairs, tablecloth, and settings.

Actors:
Two well-rehearsed adults or teens may play these rolls. They are meant to be older people looking back and remembering their younger days. They may play with British accents or not. We’ll call them Joe and Jen for the sake of the dialogue.

Scene Script:

Joe: Imagine us, sitting in the fanciest pub in England, drinking our Chateau de Chauclea wine.

Jen: Right you are, 30 years ago we would have been lucky to have had a cup of tea.

Joe: Cold tea.

Jen: Yes, without sugar or milk.

Joe: Or tea.

Jen: In a cracked and filthy cup.

Joe: We used to be so poor that we would drink tea out of a rolled-up newspaper.

Jen: You were lucky to have a newspaper, we used to have to suck our tea out of a damp cloth.

Joe: We were poor but we were happy.

Jen: We were happy because we were poor.

Joe: Right you are, my daddy said that dollars would never buy happiness.

Jen: That’s because he never had any money, the filthy beggar.

Joe: When I was young we used to live in a house with big holes in the roof.

Jen: You had a house? You were lucky! We used to live in a bottle cap, 23 of us in the middle of the ocean.

Joe: Well, I say it was a house, actually it was a room all 36 of us, and we had only half a floor. We had a big hole in the middle of the floor and we used to huddle next to the wall for fear we would fall in.

Jen: You were lucky! We used to live in a hallway.

Joe: Well, you were lucky! We used to live in an abandoned septic tank in the middle of the garbage dump.

Jen: You lived in a septic tank? You were lucky! We lived in a paper sack in the bottom of a toxic waste dump. Every morning we would awaken to nuclear waste being dumped on us until we glowed.

Joe: Actually, the house I was telling you about was no more than a hole in the ground, covered with twigs.

Jen: Well, you were lucky! We were evicted from our hole. We had to live at the bottom of the lake.

Joe: You were lucky to live at the bottom of a lake. There were 150 of us living in a shoebox in the middle of a road. We dreamed of living in a lake.

Jen: You were lucky to live in a shoe box. We lived in a brown paper bag. All 300 of us! Got up at 6 a.m., ate a crust of stale bread, and worked in the mills for 12 hours. When we got home Dad would beat us and put us to bed with no dinner.

Joe: Well you were lucky! We used to get up at 3 a.m., strain the lake clean with our teeth, eat a cup of hot gravel, work 15 hours at the mill and when we got home our Dad would beat us about the head and shoulders with a broken beer bottle and use us for kitty litter.

Jen: We dreamed of that! We used to live in a rusty tin can in the middle of the road. One hour after sunset we would clean the road with our tongues, eat a handful of cold gravel and work 20 hours at the mill with no pay! When we got home our Dad would cut us up with a dull Gensu knife and use us for cheese fondue.

Joe: Well, you were lucky! That was a luxury. We used to get up in the morning at 10 at night which was half an hour before we went to bed – eat a hunk of dry poison work 29 hours a day at the mill and when we got home our parents would kill us and dance around our grave singing “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah.”

Jen: But you tell that to the kids today and they simply don’t believe you.

Based On An Old Classic Monty Python Sketch