Fun_People Archive
14 Sep
The Stranded Engineer!

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 96 18:45:05 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: The Stranded Engineer!

From: Susan Morell <morells@belnet.bellevue.k12.wa.us>
From: Corey Dunsky <coreyd@isomedia.com>
	Stranded Engineer!

An engineer was enjoying his very first vacation ever, relaxing on a cruise
ship in the Caribbean.  It was wonderful, the experience of his life.  He
was being waited on hand and foot.  But a hurricane came up, and the ship
went down--almost instantly.

The man found himself, he knew not how, swept up on the shore of an island.
There was nothing else anywhere to be seen.  No person, no supplies,
nothing.  The man looked around.  There were some bananas and coconuts, but
that was it.  He was desperate, and forlorn, but decided to make the best
of it.  So for the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice and
mostly looked to the sea hoping for a ship to come to his rescue.

One day, as he was lying on the beach stroking his beard and looking for a
ship, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye.  Could it be true,
was it a ship?  No.  From around the corner of the island came a rowboat.

But in it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen, or at least seen in
four months.  She was tall, tanned, and her blond hair flowing in the sea
breeze gave her an almost ethereal quality.  She spotted him waving and
yelling and screaming to get her attention and rowed her boat towards him.

In disbelief, he asked, "Where did you come from?  How did you get here"?
She said, "I rowed from the other side of the island.  I landed on this
island when my cruise ship sank"  "Amazing", he said, "I didn't know anyone
else had survived.  How many of you are there?  Where, did you get the
rowboat?  Wow, you were really lucky to have a rowboat wash-up with you!"

"It is only me", she said, "and the rowboat didn't wash up, nothing else
did." "Well then", said the man, "how did you get the rowboat?"  "I made
the rowboat out of raw material that I found on the island", replied the
woman.  "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," asked the man, "what about tools and hardware, how did you do that?"
"Oh, no problem," replied the woman, "on the south side of the island there
is a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock exposed. I found that If I fired
it in my kiln it would melt 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?"  The man was forced to confess that he had been
sleeping on the beach.  "Well, let's row over to my place," she said.  So
they both got into the rowboat and left for her side of the island.

The woman rowed them around to a wharf that led to the approach to her
place.  She tied up the rowboat with a beautifully woven hemp rope. They
walked up a stone walk and around a Palm tree, there stood an exquisite
bungalow painted in blue and white.  "It's not much," she said, "but I call
it home.  Sit down please, would you like to have a drink?"  "No, said the
man, one more coconut juice and I will puke."  "Oh, it won't be 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 a while exchanging stories, the woman asked, "Have you always had a
beard?"  "No, I was clean shaven all of my life, even on the cruise ship"
he replied.  "Well if you would like to shave, there is a man's razor
upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom."  The man, no longer questioning
anything, went upstairs to 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.  The man shaved,
showered and went back down stairs.  "You look great," said the woman, "I
think I will go up and slip into something more comfortable."  So she did.

The man continued to sip his Pina Colada.  After a short time, the woman
returned wearing fig leafs strategically positioned and smelling faintly of
gardenia.  "Tell me," she asked, "we have both been out here for a very long
time with no, er, companionship.  You know what I mean.  Have you been
lonely, is there anything that you really miss?  Something that all men
need, and women, too. Something that it would be really nice to have right
now."  "Yes there is, " the man replied, as he moved closer to the woman
and fixed a winsome gaze upon her.  "Tell me ... Do you have an Internet
connection?"

[Not to be confused with the Fun_People posting of 1/8/95 titled "A Joke"
<URL: http://www.empire.net/~psl/Fun_People/1995/1995ABC.html>  -psl]
[er epqb,y]
[UPDATE: The Fun_People archive moved in September 1998 to:
	<http://www.langston.com/Fun_People/>  -psl]

© 1996 Peter Langston