A Three Hour Tour

There is a girl in New York City
Who calls herself the human trampoline
And sometimes when I’m falling, flying
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
Oh, so this is what she means - Paul Simon

We go through our lives and we watch other people slide down. Sometimes it is a child gleefully steering their Flexible Flyer into the bumps on the snow covered slope. Sometimes it is a relative who has lost a job and can’t stop the downward spiral. I once stood there inches away from Cassidy as she rode her bike with training wheels in the driveway. She was three and had the same smile on her face as that child on the sled. Then she hit the edge of the driveway and tipped and fell – FLASH – that quick, broken arm. You can do your best for everyone around you, you can be right where you are supposed to be, still you are left watching as others go down. You are a spectator, the best you can hope for is being there on the sidelines, waving the pom poms with all the youthful enthusiasm of a high school cheerleader, willing them to get the hell up!

I am again caught watching one of those slides. The lady who was practically dancing around the halls yesterday has again taken to the bed and her face has assumed the same ashen grey complexion of a Halloween ghoul. She is grabbing her side like a boxer who has taken one too many body blows. She is clutching the bucket like a college girl after her first frat party. She was given false hope by trained professionals who should know better. She now lays drugged and dejected and guilt-ridden because she thinks somehow this is her fault that she felt so good and now feels so bad. And I am doing my best to root her on but I just don’t have the legs for those skimpy outfits.

It feels like we’re stuck in a whole season of Gilligan’s Island episodes. We somehow booked a cruise on the S.S. Minnow. This morning, we started out on a pleasure cruise. We were three hours from homebound. Then the tidal wave hit and sliding down the side of it was the Minnow. I’m still trying to figure out which of the characters we are. The Howell’s, Thurston and Lovey? Nah, ain’t got the bucks. The Skipper, Gilligan? Nah, we’re not part of the crew. The movie star? Not even close. So that’s it, we’re the rest. You remember the song right? The first season it didn’t even mention the Professor and Mary Ann, they were “and the rest.”

We are shipwrecked in Cleveland. The surgeon is the Skipper, a man who has so much sea and medical experience but can’t relay how the tides and routine recovery work to his passengers. Gilligan is any one of the surgeon’s first mate residents who try their best but come off only as clowns with their misdiagnoses and their accelerated optimism, not yet experienced enough to know the dangers of the seas and post-op recovery. Renee is Mary Ann, she is running around half naked without a darn clue as to what is happening. I am the Professor, I can build a radio from coconuts but it will only receive and not transmit. I can build huts that can withstand hurricanes but I can’t fix a 3x3 hole in a boat or build a raft that will hold together in calm seas. I can do almost anything to simulate the creature comforts of home, I just can’t get us off of this dang island.

At the end of every episode of Gilligan’s Island, no matter how close they were to going home or how high their hopes were for getting off that island, there was always some setback that placed them right back where they were at the beginning of the show. That is where Renee and I are now, and the worst part, no laugh track. I’ve got to supply that all on my own. I hope its working.

Tune in tomorrow to see if this crew can somehow overcome this 60’s sitcom curse.