An ambitious stockbroker 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 a while. 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 four-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 it 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,"
the woman said. "On the south side of the island, there is a
very unusual strata of exposed alluvial rock. 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. Where do
you live?"
Sheepishly, the man 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,
dumb struck. 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. "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
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 to its tip, inside a swivel mechanism. "This woman
is amazing," he mused. "What next?" When he returned,
the woman 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...
... He replied, "You mean I can check my e-mail from here?"...