My eyes were transfixed in shock when I heard my name. My mouth opened briefly then shut on its own without a word proceeding from it.
Source
“Okay young lady, when can I get it?” The graying man with bald hard and round glasses perched on his nose asked.
“She can submit it next week, sir” my best friend, Treasure, who was busy enjoying the whole episode, chipped in for me.
“Are you her spokesperson?” He snapped, peering sternly at her from his glasses before turning back to me. “Yes, my dear. When can I get it?”
We were sent out to a radio station within the city by the professor handling us on a course titled ‘Writing for the Radio, Stage and Television’.
After a lengthy interview session with the human resource person of the station, he then asked to know those who had a writing career already amongst us.
Echoes of my name rang out randomly from my coursemates. There were smiles on my face when I was asked to rise for recognition but when the man said he needed me to produce a comedy script for the station, the smile vanished from my face, leaving me gaping in shock.
“Next weekend Sir,” I finally replied to him. He shook his head slowly from side to side and took his glasses off his nose.
“That would be too far. Let's work towards Monday next week….” I nearly screamed, it meant I had just the weekend to come up with the comic script.
We all rose after that to take different poses so one of the staff members could take our photographs. While my mates were whispering excitedly to one another about their experience at the station, I was unusually quiet.
“What's up?” Treasure poked me in the side as we descended the stairs, heading back home.
“The script!” She made a giggling sound that made me turn warning eyes to her
“But you write, why the fuss about a comedy script?”
“You don't understand,” I began, “I'm not even funny…” This caused her to explode with laughter.
“See? You're very funny!” I dragged my lashes at her in a disdainful up-and-down movement.
“So, you want me to document what we just said into a radio script?”
“Relax, madam. All you need is to sit down and think carefully, scripting is your thing, this one cannot be too hard”
I eyed her warily, sometimes I wondered what gave her the confidence that just because I was a writer, I could work magic to produce any script at all.
I dragged her by the hand when she attempted to take a separate bus to her house.
“What are you doing?” She asked.
“You're coming with me. We're going to think about this script together.”
Before she could protest, I dragged her along with me into a tricycle that was headed to my house.
“I don't understand you o,” she said when we dropped from the tricycle, “Do I look like I have a good sense of humor?”
“I was wondering the same thing when you said the script would be nothing for me to write. We will sit together and brainstorm. Even if we have never had a good sense of humor, today is the day to develop one”
We both laughed as we began to walk home, talking loudly about prospective ideas for the script. By the time we got home, we were both frustrated.
“I didn't know this was what you had to go through to create a script,” she said glumly. Somehow, that made a smile appear on my face, the effort I put into writing was greatly underrated.
“I don't think we need to have a sense of humor to get a comic script though. I think we just need to see what other people are doing and try to replicate it. So, let's channel our energy into looking for radio comedy script samples.”
By the end of that day, I had written over 6 samples of comic scripts that I found on the internet and barely any of them made us laugh.
“This sense of humor thing must be a gift,” I began “It's a special talent that God gives to certain people and none of the writers of these scripts are one of them”
That made us laugh again.
“So, what are you going to do about this script?” Treasure asked as she picked up her things to leave
“I'll call the man and tell him I'm not a funny person…” We both laughed again.
“That's a first,” Treasure said, picking up her bag as we prepared to step out “I have never seen you giving up on a writing job before”.
“There's a first time to everything please” We both burst into laughter again.