Moral Traffic Lights

from The Fisher King 

by Richard LaGravenese

Disabled Veteran:  [Sitting on floor, panhandling; facing audience]   Did you hear Jimmy Nickels got picked up yesterday?

Yeah. He got caught pissing in a bookstore.  Man's a pig.  No excuse for that.

[to woman who just dropped some coins in his cup]  Thank ya' baby. 

We're headed for social anarchy when people start pissing on books.

[Passerby drops coin--it hits the ground next to the vet who watches the man down the street.]   Asshole.  Didn't even look at me.  Well, he's paying so he don't hafta look. Guy goes to work eight hours a day, seven days a week. Gets his nuts so tight in a vice that he starts to question the very fabric of his existence. Then one day about quitting time, boss calls him in the office and says: "Hey, Bob, why don't you come in here and kiss my ass for me, will ya?" Well, he says to hell with it. I don't care what happens, I just want to see the expression on his face as I jam this pair of scissors into his arm.

[sighs] Then he thinks of me. He says, wait a minute, I got both my arms, both my legs, at least I'm not begging for a living. Sure enough, Bob's going to put those scissors down and pucker right up.

You see, I'm what you call kinda of a moral traffic light, really. I'm like, [robotically] "RED! Go no further!  Beep beep beep beep beep beep..."