A hurricane came unexpectedly.
The ship went down and was lost. A business man found
himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other
people, no supplies, nothing. Only bananas and coconuts.
Used to 5-star hotels, this guy had no idea what to do,
so for the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut
milk and longed for his old life and fixed his gaze on
the sea, hoping to spot a rescue ship. One
day, as he was lying on the beach, he spotted movement
out of the corner of his eye. It was a rowboat, and
in it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen.
She rowed up to him.
In disbelief, he asked her:
"Where did you come from? How did you get here?"
"I rowed from the other
side of the island," she said. "I landed
here when my cruise ship sank."
"Amazing," he said. "I
didn't know anyone else had survived. How many are
there? You were lucky to have a rowboat wash up with
you."
"It's only me,"
she said, "and the rowboat didn't wash up; nothing
did."
He was confused. "Then
how did you get the rowboat?"
"Oh, simple," replied the
woman. "I made the rowboat out of materials that
I found on the island. The oars were whittled from
Gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches
and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree."
"B-B-But that's impossible,"
stuttered the man. "You had no tools or hardware.
How did you manage?"
"Oh, that was no problem,"
replied the woman. "On the other side of the
island there is a very unusual stratum of alluvial
rock exposed. I found that if I fired it to a certain
temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile
iron. I used that for tools, and used the tools to
make the hardware. But enough of that," she said.
"Where do you live?"
Sheepishly, he confessed that
he had been sleeping on the beach the whole time.
"Well, let's row over
to my place, then," she said.
After a few minutes of rowing she
docked the boat at a small wharf. As the man looked
to the shore he nearly fell out of the boat. Before
him was a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow
painted in blue and white. While the woman tied up
the rowboat with expertly woven hemp rope, the man
only stare ahead, dumbstruck. As they walked into
the house, she said casually, "It's not much,
but I call it home. Sit down, please; would you like
a drink?"
"No, no thank you,"
he said, still dazed. "I can't take any more
coconut milk."
"It's not coconut milk,"
the woman replied. "I have a still. How about
a Pina Colada?" Trying to hide his amazement,
the man accepted, and they sat down on her couch to
talk.
After they had exchanged their stories,
the woman announced, "I'm going to slip into
something comfortable. Would you like to take a shower
and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet
in the bathroom."
No longer questioning anything, the
man went into the bathroom. There in the cabinet was
a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed
to a hollow ground edge were fastened onto its end
inside a swivel mechanism. "This woman is amazing,"
he mused. "What next?"
When he returned, she greeted him
wearing nothing but vines – strategically positioned
- and smelling faintly of gardenias.
She beckoned for him to sit down
next to her. "Tell me," she began, suggestively,
slithering closer to him, "we've been out here
for a very long time. You've been lonely.
There's something I'm sure you really
feel like doing right now, something you've been longing
for all these months. You know..." She stared
into his eyes.
He couldn't believe
what he was hearing. "You mean--" he replied,
"I can check my e-mail from here?"
|