A hurricane came unexpectedly. The ship went
down and was lost. The 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 juice 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 an expertly
woven hemp rope, the man
could 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
juice." "It's not coconut
juice," 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 it's
end inside a swivel
mechanism.
"This woman is amazing," he mused. "What
next?" When he returned, she
greeted him wearing nothing but strategically
positioned vines - 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?"