| the blog of human failure
As luck would have it the two men were rescued the next day by a sightseeing tour helicopter that saw the smoke coming from the island. They were brought to a hospital in San Francisco to be treated for exposure and minor injuries but were released a few days later. Scolnick said good bye to his friend, making sure to get his information so that they could forever stay in touch.
“Anytime you need anything, Henry, don’t be afraid to call,” said Mitch during their last moments in the infirmary together. Scolnick was shocked to see as he walked out of the hospital that the parking lot was full of news reporters and they were all waiting for him.
“How did you survive?” barked one reporter.
“Were you able to resist the deliciously sinful temptation of homosexuality?” barked another reporter.
“How many jelly beans are in this jar?” barked another reporter, holding aloft a jar of jelly beans.
“Arf, arf, arf?” barked a seal.
Scolnick couldn’t believe it. He was surrounded by media attention for weeks after the event. Meaning had finally been attributed to his life and he was riding on a wave of pure pleasure. In the supermarket he ran into a woman holding a tuna steak who recognized him from TV.
“My name is Susan,” she said to him. “Aren’t you that guy from the plane crash who was stuck on the island?”
“That’s me,” he said completely incredulous.
“Why don’t you come home with me? I’m going to make you a very happy man for the rest of your life.” Scolnick was elated. He dropped his Lean Cuisine in his cart and threw his arms around the woman.
“You smell like you know what you’re talking about,” he said rubbing his nose up against her ear.
“Oh sorry, I think that might be the tuna,” she said. Susan grabbed his hand and they started moving towards the checkout line.
And Scolnick’s luck did not stop there. A public relations firm in San Francisco approached him to do a series of commercials for a diet program. The only problem was they didn’t have a product for him to promote. Henry suggested an island aerobic workout where willing customers were dropped on a deserted island to fend for themselves for a month.
“It’s like Survivor but without all the other assholes!,” he exclaimed.
Not only were they interested in having him promote the idea, they were so impressed with his vision that they decided to give him a position in the company. A new job and a new woman. I’ve got to go find some faces into which this will be thrown, thought Scolnick, proud that he had learned to stop ending his thoughts in prepositions.
The worst problem the two men faced was the boredom. They had an entertaining game of tag going for about two weeks, but tired of it after a long drawn-out dispute over who was really “it”.
“It’s just not fun if you’re not going to play by the rules,” Mitch said to Henry with venom.
In order to further stave off the boredom the men would talk to each other for hours at a time. Mitch would relate stories to Henry about his wife and his job as an advertising executive in Los Angeles. Scolnick would tell stories about things he once found in his nose, which jelly beans tasted the worst, and the time he found a jelly bean in his nose. The men laughed and worked together, becoming close friends in the process.
About a month into their excursion on an early Funday evening the men were sitting on the beach throwing stones into the ocean.
“Alright,” said Scolnick. “If you were trapped on a desert island and could only bring one book, one CD, and one movie, which ones would you choose?”
“I don’t really think I want to play this game,” said McCulloch, skipping his rock against the waves. “I have to apologize to you, Henry. I wasn’t very nice to you on the plane all those weeks ago. I can’t say this is my dream to be trapped on an island with a complete stranger, but you’re a good man and I appreciate you not killing me in my sleep.”
“It was the least I could do after you made such a big deal about it,” said Scolnick smiling. “So we’re friends then, huh Mitch?”
“Until the day I die of this dysentery, island brother.”
The two men decided that night to make a final pact to seal their friendship. After a quick brainstorm, they settled on matching tattoos. While Scolnick was hoping for a racecar, Mitch convinced him that a palm tree would be more appropriate. They sharpened rocks and carved the design into each other’s left arm, blood trickling all the while. The bond between the two men had been cemented.
“Now do a racecar on my back,” said Scolnick enthusiastically.
“Whatever you say my friend,” said McCulloch with a smile.
“You’re alive,” said Scolnick. “I was about to eat you!”
“Well now no one is eating anyone.” The man, gulped water down from the lake. “We need to gather supplies together. We’ve got this lake here for water but we’re going to need to make a tent, scrape together some firewood and find something we can eat on this god-forsaken island.”
“I’m more of a jelly bean type of guy,” Scolnick said, staring down into his cuticles.
“Are you some kind of mental patient? We need to survive.”
“Well I don’t even know your name,” said Scolnick.
“The name is Mitch McCulloch. Now please try to hunt around and find some firewood. I’m going to put us together a shack.”
Without sarcasm, Scolnick snapped to attention like an army recruit with his hand tight to his brow.
“I won’t let you down Mitch.” Scolnick ran over to his new friend and threw his arms around the man. “You smell like you know what you know what you’re talking about.” He squeezed the larger man and then snapped around and with arms pumping ran into the forest.
“I’m giving search and rescue three days and then I’m disemboweling myself,” McCulloch mumbled to himself and wandered out towards the beach.
Over the next few days McCulloch and Scolnick worked together to get themselves situated on the island. Mitch made a hut out of reeds and tree branches and to show his appreciation Scolnick made them a dinette set out of bark and mud. Henry also thought to carve a calendar on the side of a large stone that he carved into with another stone. He decided however that, considering this was his calendar, he would call Monday “Funday”, Tuesday “Snoozeday, Wednesday “Friendsday” and then he got bored with the idea and called the other four days Thursday.
It turned out the island had many natural resources that the men could draw from, including a wild corn patch, goats roaming the eastern edge of the island, and trout surrounding them in the shallows along the sand. The island was not without problems however. The sun was ferocious and oppressed the men constantly. Scolnick tried to assuage the problem by slathering himself in his own feces but Mitch had a talk with him about it and in the end was able to convince him to use the lotion from the aloe plants instead. There were two wolves on the island that had to be dealt with as they were eating the goats and impolitely urinating very close to the drinking water. Scolnick, in perhaps the first brave action of his life, was able to reason with wolves, reminding them that in Robinson Crusoe the wolves did not appear until the men had escaped the island and were somewhere in the mountains of Spain. The wolves, so embarrassed at their faux pas, drowned themselves in the ocean that very night.
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