My husband is hooked on an incredibly silly TV show, and I had to go and ask him about it.
Called “Naked and Afraid,” on the Discovery Channel, the show pits one male and one female volunteer “survivalist” against a tropical wilderness for 21 days, before being extracted. They can each bring only one tool.
Oh, and aside from a burlap tote bag, each is completely naked.
Of course, all the “naughty bits ” are blurred out. Still, you know they’re there. This is probably why my beloved has warehoused 19 episodes, but I don’t care (except that it’s cramping my episodes of “Castle”).
He is hoping that somehow the censors will miss a frame. It’s like the way a dog hangs around the dinner table – except food sometimes does drop from the table, whereas these censors have no intention of losing their broadcast license. I don’t mind. If he’s watching a naked air-head turn vicious after seven days without food, well, I’m looking better and better.
Still, I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have asked, “So, who would you choose as your partner?” Because I knew what he’d say. He hasn’t reached our 27th anniversary by muffing such a “gimme” question.
And yet…he paused. He appeared to actually be thinking it over! “I don’t know,” he finally said. It was the tone of voice he saves for serious questions, like whether we should get Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream, or Cherry Garcia.
“Not ME?” I finally had to ask.
“Well, do you know good from poisonous mushrooms?” he queried.
“As far as you’ll ever know, I do.”
“Or how to survive a coral snake bite?”
“I think I’ll let it bite you, now.”
“But that could be fatal! Especially if we’re several days from a western hospital!”
“Should have thought of that before,” I murmured sweetly.
“I’m just trying to spare you. You know how you get about mosquitos.”
“You know this will never actually happen, don’t you? And yet you still aren’t choosing your WIFE?” I couldn’t get over it.
“Well, have you ever caught any wild animals?” he continued.
“I caught you, didn’t I?”
“Humph,” he said. But he smiled.
“Yet, then you go and choose somebody else to take to the jungle?”
“Would you swat flies for me while I tried to start the fire?”
“Why not just let me start the fire?”
“As long as you haven’t lost the fire-starter – that’s what one woman did.”
“I’d never do that! Why are you laughing?”
“I’m just thinking how many times a day you lose your cell-phone and have to call it. You know you can’t do that in the jungle.”
One of the women abandoned her partner, and took off into the wilderness without him. He might not have followed, except she was the one with the extraction plan – where to be for the helicopter on Day 21.
“I would never do that,” I told my beloved.
“Oh no? What about that time you drove off, with all the luggage?”
“I told you, I was just moving the car!”
There is often friction, between these folks, about how to resolve their priorities. We had that on our very first trip, to Montreal.
I thought we were driving to the top of Mount Royal, to see the view at sunset, when he pulled up at some kind of water.
“Why are we stopping?”
“To see the beaver pond.”
“But if we stop now the sun will set before we reach the top!”
“But isn’t it restful here?”
“It isn’t restful, it’s boring! What’s restful is the view from the top!”
We fought so bitterly, and so long, that the rangers closed the whole park before we could enjoy either choice.
After that, we both realized that I will always want the view from the hill-top, and he will always be happiest near a body of water. That’s why we live in Port Washington, where there are hills – and ponds – right up to the water’s edge.
And after all that, he’d choose some non-existent babe for his imaginary jungle jaunt?
Well, I’m off to my own kind of wilderness. I call my best friend and tell her to be ready for adventure:
“They were inserted into Roosevelt Field with just one credit card between them, and a map to the parking lot for the final extraction. Twelve hours alone, with a single gold card – how will they ever survive?”
