ella: Oh, knock it off, would you? I’m exhausted.
weston: Try the table. Nice and hard. It’ll do wonders for you.
ella: (Suddenly soft) The table?
weston: Yeah. Just stretch yourself out. You’ll be amazed. Better than any bed.
(ella looks at the table for a second, then starts pushing all the clean laundry off it onto the floor. She pulls herself up onto it and stretches out on it. weston goes on coocking with his back to her. She watches him as she lies there.)
weston: And when you wake up I’ll have a big breakfast of ham and eggs, ready and waiting. You’ll feel like a million bucks. You’ll wonder why you spent all those years in bed, once you feel that table. That table will deliver you.
[...]
weston: That’s the trouble with too much comfort, you know? Makes you forget where you come from. Makes you lose touch. You think you’re making headway but you’re losing all the time. You’re falling behind more and more. You’re going into a trance that you’ll never come back from. You’re being hypnotized. Your body’s being mesmerized. You go into a coma. That’s why you need a hard table once in a while to bring you back. A good hard table to bring you back to life.
[act iii]
In the midst of Curse Of The Starving Class, one of Sam Shepard’s family plays, a man metaphorically offers her wife a hard table to rest on.
Curse Of The Starving Class in: Shepard, Sam. Seven Plays. New York: Bantam Books. P.189.
