Sunday, May 24, 2020

A Three Month Tour

Imagine being trapped on an island with just six other people without contact from the outside world for days, weeks, months at a time. Just that dopey little radio that seemed to catch all the news that would bring excitement or adventure to the otherwise dreary life of pineapple and coconuts, pineapple and coconuts, pineapple and coconuts.
We don't really have to imagine anymore. While I have not resorted to setting logs on fire in my front yard to signal spacecraft passing overhead, I have begun to build huts in the back yard. Well, a "hut." It's actually just the tent we have infrequently used for camping, but it has served as a destination for my wife and I over the past several weeks. Like the "other side of the island" where Gilligan and his big buddy the Skipper would often encounter headhunters and escaped gorillas, all kinds of dangers await us in our back yard.
Not the least of those being other human beings. The standard issue family dinners on the patio have  become adventures in social distancing. Suddenly we have five more castaways that need to stand, sit or move keeping a six foot radius around them as we relax and enjoy company from the outside world. It's an awkward dance, but necessary to our eventual survival. At some point, we will all have to go back to interacting with other humans aside from Zoom meetings and Netflix parties. I confess that I find it nearly incomprehensible now when I recall the throngs of people I have waded through in Disneyland. Or the lack of regimentation of the "lines" to get into Black Friday sales. Our lives are currently  pineapple and coconuts, pineapple and coconuts, pineapple and coconuts.
And as for that radio, I can only say that the only news that seems to pour from the media holes we allow is pretty uniform: What day is it? How many have died? What's the weather like? Who cares? Which may be why eventually the Professor eventually began tearing apart that radio and using it to create more exotic electronics. With the right amount of bamboo and some pineapple and coconuts, he might almost certainly created a wi-fi receiver so that they could all sit around in the middle of the jungle and watch Tiger King.
This would happen right before an actual tiger leaped from the brush and mauled them all. We call this "synergy." Or "island fever."
Pass me the pineapple and coconuts, pineapple and coconuts, pineapple and coconuts.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'd like to believe that Tina Louise contributed to this post.