An ambitious business consultant finally decided to take a vacation. He
booked himself on a Caribbean cruise and proceeded to have the time of
his life. ...at least for awhile. A hurricane came unexpectedly. The
ship went down and was lost instantly. 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 4-star hotels, this guy had no idea what to do. So for the next
four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice, 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
of you are there? You were really 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 raw material
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."
"But-- 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 south side of the
island there is a very unusual strata 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 onto
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 to have a drink?
"No, no thank you" he said, still dazed, "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 continued 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 more 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 on to its end inside of 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?"[B]
