keyword "oceanic" title "cast aways" in misc. flash fiction

Whenever “Gilligan’s Island” comes up in conversation, invariably we’ll get around to the idea that if the Professor was so brilliant, why wasn’t he able to build a raft and get back to Hawaii? As if the ability to invent or build are the only kinds of intelligence out there in the world. As if that’s the only kind of smarts, smarts in making, smarts in calculating, smarts in knowing how the physical world works.

There are other kinds of intelligence, is what I’m trying to say. There’s a thing called emotional intelligence, the intelligence of social situation, smart enough to know what not to say, to know what not to do. The brilliance to know when to leave well enough alone. Knowing when to get out of your own way and just be.

When the Minnow wrecked on the shore of that uncharted desert isle, he had long before taken stock of the situation. There were two women way out of his league on that ship and he saw that the only other people present were an elderly couple and two gay dudes.

The Professor flexed his powerful professorial mind, oceanic in depth and breadth, and did the math. He took stock of the crew and fellow passengers, took stock of his life as an unappreciated teacher at a little nowhere school and then he did what any other smart man would have. It was not the storm at all but rather the Professor who sunk that boat.

The Professor knew there was an island there, he’s a professor! He knew he could make himself heroic with a thousand fake escape plans he could slyly undermine and then blame the failure on Gilligan, the Skipper’s secret lover. None of the inventions were supposed to work, the Professor wasn’t a professor of physics or chemistry, he was a professor of psychology and with that set of variables he did what any of us would have.

Sometimes in this life, you find a “seam”, that’s what they call it in football, you find a seam a little daylight between the tacklers ahead and you know that if you can just squeeze through it, nothing stands betwixt you and the goal, whether that’s the game-winning touchdown or being the only option for cute little Ginger and Maryann that brunette total smoke-show. A bell went off in his genius brain, don’t throw around the blame, you would’ve done the same.

Which would you rather have, a dinky little underpaid professorship or a life trapped in paradise with Ginger and Maryann? And hell, even if that went down wrong, he had a back-up plan, just get a place in rich old Howell’s will and wait. He might not get the dream, but it’d still be fairly great. The Professor did what any of us would have done instead of living out our normal stretch of days. The Professor sunk that boat and I say, give the man his respect if not quite his praise.