Three scientists — Papaia, Banani, and Ravioli — and their assistant Igor, who work at NASAL, start getting interested in creationism. Their superiors, worried, send them to the psychologist, Professor Faggioli, a shady character determined to get them fired by making them look insane.
We are in Professor Faggioli’s office, where Ravioli is undergoing evaluation.
Ravioli was recounting an incident that happened during Christmas Eve.
With a flashback, we go back to the day Ravioli visited his parents.
Interior – Christmas Living Room – Evening
The atmosphere is perfect. The Christmas tree shines in a corner, loaded with symmetrical and bright decorations. Ravioli’s relatives are all seated neatly in the living room, like in a furniture commercial: uncles in suits and ties, cousins wearing Christmas sweaters ironed to perfection, grandma with the look of an Olympic judge of decorum.
On the glass coffee table, the sweets are arranged by shape and color. Everything is in its place.
Ravioli’s Mom: (with a sweet voice and teary eyes)
“Dear Raviolino… I have a surprise for you.”
Ravioli (scared):
“W-What is it?”
Mom: (laughing)
“Look what I found in the attic…”
(she proudly pulls out Ravioli’s old middle school backpack, faded and battered)
Uncles and aunts together:
“Ooooh…”
Mom:
“Your old middle school backpack! I kept it all these years… Imagine all the memories! Let’s open it together!”
Ravioli (turning pale):
“Uh… no, I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
Mom (determined):
“Come on, don’t be shy. It’ll be a trip down memory lane!”
Aunt Gertrude:
“Come on! Now I’m curious!”
Ravioli (serious):
“Listen, mom! Don’t do it… I’m serious!”
Too late.
With a theatrical gesture, mom opens the backpack and dumps it onto the glass coffee table. A rain of crumpled old notebooks, wrinkled papers… and along with them… pieces of rotten fish fall onto the sparkling table.
Aunt Mirella:
“What… what’s that?”
Uncle Ernesto:
“That’s disgusting!”
A toxic cloud of infernal stench spreads through the living room. The rotten fish, accumulated during afternoons at the after-school cafeteria, covers everything like a kind of putrid snow. A silence filled with terror precedes the tragedy.
Grandma: (covering her mouth)
“Glgh…”
Cousin Giulia:
“Sorry… I can’t…”
Uncle Ernesto:
“The ribollita from ’98 is coming back up—”
And then: the chain reaction.
A synchronized vomit show erupts in the perfect living room. A cousin runs to the bathroom screaming, an uncle collapses onto the carpet heaving, grandma shouts something in Latin.
Mom: (through tears, staring at the glass coffee table)
“MY DESIGNER COFFEE TABLE!”
Ravioli remains motionless, paralyzed by terror.
End of flashback.
Igor then commented:
“After decades of lies, finally the truth came to the surface. But we can’t say the same for those fish…”
🤣🤣🤣
“No! Those had been dead for years!”
🤣🤣🤣