Soliloquoy for Rat in Garage

Rat. Oh, rat, I say. I'm coming in. I'm turning on the light and I'm going to be walking around in here. We don't want any trouble. No, Rat, the way I look at it is, you don't bother me and I don't bother you. Everything is cool here, Rat. No need for trouble. I'll just noisily walk around the garage, talking all the time and you make your ratty self small and everything will be fine. Just fine.

I'm looking for the fan, Rat. I think there's another window fan in here. I thought we had three window fans last summer because, as near as I can tell, three is the absolute minimum of window fans we have to have not to die of heat exhaustion in our sleep. This house would seem to have achieved some kind of physics heat exchange impossibility, Rat: negative insulation. In the winter it's colder in there than it is outside and now that the heat is on outside? It's hotter in the house.

I don't see the fan, but I don't want to bother you, Rat, and I'm pretty sure that if I were you, I'd be back in that corner with the art supplies and the Halloween decorations, tucked between a papasan chair and Rudolf the kind of sad wire reindeer. That's also where the fan might be lurking, but I don't see it. So I'm just going to sort of poke the edges and stand back and say, Rat, are you really happy here?

This garage is pretty horrible, Rat. The smell is - well. The smell is hard to describe, because adolescent boys who like to, god help us, smoke cigars, are aromatic. And I just picked up three long dead ramen bowls and a bunch of glasses that once held Tang off the air hockey table. They had a definite pong to them as well. Do you seriously want to live like this, Rat? I think you're better than this. I think you have more in you than just hanging out in a garage with a bunch of plastic spiders and some sixteen year olds who still think a flaming skull is the ne plus ultra of design motifs.

I'm opening the garage door a few inches now. Your family and friends are probably out there, you know. You could go home and have some stories to tell - you'd be a feted and dined adventurer, Rat - hell, the story of the Samurai sword alone would probably make the whole trip worthwhile. I have your best interests at heart, Rat. I think you should go home, carry on with your ratty destiny, speak rattese with your rat homies, get all rat down in the rat hood. Rat on, my ratty brother. Rat on and out.

I'm turning the light out now, Rat. I'm leaving quietly. Please take this chance to make your mother's heart glad - leave, Rat, oh please, go home.