Bill and Janice are preparing food for Solomon's birthday party. Solomon, now fourteen years old is in the dining room, he has a basket of crayons in front of him. He is coloring pages in a coloring book. He draws overlapping squares of color, disregarding the lines on the pages..
Bill cuts beef and chicken into chunks for shish-kabobs, Janice is cutting the vegetables.
JANUS: It was two days late, they don't even charge a late fee for five.
JANICE: You think it's late fees I'm worried about? Bill, that was two days thinking that you had abandoned us, or that you had died, or worse.
JANUS: What's worse than that?
JANICE: There are things worse then death.
JANUS" Yeah, I've heard that before, but nobody can ever tell me what they are. I don't think there's anything worse than that. No matter how much you've accomplished…
JANICE: Don't try to change the subject.
JANUS: No, Janice, this is the problem, no matter how much you've planned and prepared, when you go, there will be something you never did, some part of being alive that you have never experienced. While you're alive there's at least the possibility that some day you'll do it, but when you're dead, you're nothing but a list of what you didn't do.
JANICE: (sarcastic) You know what, you're right, every time I think of Martin Luther King I think of all the things he didn't do.
JANUS: He doesn't think at all any more, he doesn't exist; everything we know about him is made up--what someone else thought about him. Even stuff he wrote down, we only know what it means based on what we think ourselves.
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