The Duffer

by Ian Robinson

DUFFER ……..of smart kids and Survivor

By Ian Robinson  

            MONKEY Boy and I were on an outing of great cultural importance.  Monkey Boy is what I still sometimes call my son when I forget or when my wife isn’t around to smack me.  He’s four now, and a finer porch monkey has never graced this fair earth, but when he was younger, like from the time he was born to the age of almost two, the poor little guy had so much hair on his shoulders, he could have successfully auditioned for a bit on The Sopranos, if you know what I mean.  You don’t get cable? You live in a cave and don’t know The Sopranos? 

            OK, try this: the boy was hairier than your 86 year old great aunt’s upper lip and a troop of tree dwelling apes.  Combined. Hairier, even, than the legs of the women who made it to the final four in Survivor: The Australian Outback. 

            By the way, speaking of Survivor, every guy I know is going on about how wonderful that Elizabeth chiclet is, with her perfect hair, teeth, abs and all.  A big thing in her favour – and this is something guys don’t normally care about – is that unlike the late and unlamented Jeri, Elizabeth seems to have a personality that doesn’t mirror that of a pit viper about to bite a puppy. 

            Jeri’s the kind of girl for whom the Northern Pikes song, She Ain’t Pretty, She Just Looks That Way, seems to have been written.  All the other girl-boy songs on the radio are about Elizabeth or somebody just like her.  She’s a Betty. Jeri is a Veronica … only worse. 

            It was inspired casting, having those two kinds of women on the show, because everybody can relate.  Elizabeth’s the kind of girl you fall in love with in high school and she was nice enough to let you follow her around and worship her and take her to the movies sometimes, but you knew all along she was saving herself for the right guy who was going to have a square jaw, a mouthful of big, white teeth, and a future income in the mid-six figures.  Guys like me wind up handing golf clubs to the guys an Elizabeth marries.  Or cleaning their pools.  And glad to do it, yes sir, because Elizabeth’s marry really nice, charming, genuinely wonderful guys. 

            A Jeri, by contrast, is the kind who will date you a couple of times, just for the sheer pleasure of tearing your heart from your chest and holding it in front of your disbelieving eyes and then biting down on it.  Hard.  Date a Jeri just the once and you start considering a career in one of celibate professions.  Accountant.  Like that. 

            But anyway, cause I’m the kind of guy who has to ruin everything for himself; I can’t just sit there on the couch in the basement and quietly lust after Elizabeth while I watch Survivor.  Partly because I’m sort of old enough to be her dad and it would be creepy, and partly because my wife watches Survivor with me, so I have to say stuff like, “Jeez, that bikini’s awful small.  She could cover up or people will think ill of her morals.”  Of course, my wife’s lots smarter than me so she sees through it, but appreciates the effort.  I think.  I hope.  I pray.  But mostly, I look at the TV and think: thirty-six days without a shower.  Also, since the morons went and built their camp in a dry creekbed that ain’t so dry anymore, so there’s no soap anymore.  Not only that, one episode, the old guy was running around stripping the softest bark – there’s an oxymoron for you, right there, isn’t there?  Softest and bark, like putting Calgary Flames and Stanley Cup in the same sentence – off the trees to use as TOILET PAPER! 

            Let me repeat that.  Softest.  Bark.  Toilet.  Paper. Ow.             

            Let me repeat that.  Ow. 

            Frankly, I can’t imagine that anybody’s none too, um, rigorous about that part of the hygiene day.  If you have to wipe with bark, I figure you try not to take more than a single, half-hearted swipe at best. 

            So instead of just getting to dig watching the semi-nude hardbodies on the TV, I gotta sit there and ruin the entire experience for myself thinking about tree bark and people’s soft spots, the lack of soap and the fact that I’m really glad Sony hasn’t come up with a new, widescreen TV featuring Smell-O-Vision, because I’m pretty sure those folks are pretty damn ripe by now. 

            Plus, come to think of it, I haven’t seen a toothbrush in evidence lately either.           

            Aside from the probable smell, something else that really bugs me about Survivor is the whole food situation. 

            Every episode they show you kangaroos.  Some kind of big old flightless bird that has to walk everywhere.  I’m thinking, it’s time to hit the kangaroo over the head with a stick.  It is time to chuck a rock at the flightless fowl.  How hard can that be? 

            After all, this is a bird that’s too dumb or lazy to fly.  Mr. Darwin is just begging you to kill that herd.  It might even be time to float down the river to that big old rock and try to drive a pointy stick into that alligator.  Sure it’s dangerous, but there’s an alligator recipe I’ve had for years without the chance to put it into practice. 

            But nope, they don’t hunt.  They just sit around and bitch about being hungry. 

            So anyway, about an hour before the last time Survivor came on, I took my boy on the cultural outing I was taking about earlier.  It was one of my favourite places in the world.  That’s right.  The beer store.  And I’m striding out with a six-pack of Alexander Keith’s Pale Ale and a six-pack of Sleeman’s Stream, the latter because they’re practically giving it away for some reason, and the boy is a couple of steps ahead of me and he steps on the mat in front of the door and the door opens automatically.  The way it does.                 

            And my four year old turns to me and says, kind of wide eyed, “How does it do that, Daddy?” 

            And because I want my son to grow up in a world of wonders, a world of imagination – reality can wait – I say to him, “I dunno, boy.  Maybe…” and let my voice trail off. 

            “Maybe what Daddy?” 

            “Maybe… aw forget it.  It’s too weird.” 

            “What Daddy?  What is it?” 

            I lean over and whisper.  “Maybe it’s magic.” 

            And he shakes his head kind of sadly at me and my four year old says, “I don’t think so, Dad.  I think it’s something mechanical.” 

            Something mechanical.  I may not know much but I know this.  One, kids are smarter than they used to be.  Two, enjoy Survivor while you can.  Cause we’re dumb enough as contestants and viewers to make Survivor interesting.  When this current generation grows up, a show like Survivor just plain won’t work. 

            Twenty, thirty years from now, you go, and maroon a kid like my very own monkey boy in the middle of the Australian outback, and leave him there for 30 days, when you come back, he and his buddies will have built a Swiss Family Robinson style treehouse, they’ll have paved a road, dug a well, dammed the river, built a hydro electric plant, figured out a process to manufacture toilet paper from the soft bark, opened duelling fast food franchises – kangaroo McNuggets vs. Kentucky Fried Gator – and have completed the groundwork for a functioning Outback Stock. 

            Market.  Or they won’t be there at all.  Maybe on the first day they’ll have built a ham radio from wild pig carcasses and arranged their own rescue.  Something mechanical.  Swear to God, that’s what the kid said to me.  Four years old.  Something mechanical.  I expected having kids to make me feel old.  Didn’t expect them to make me feel dumber than a Britney Spears’ song lyrics.   

            Oh well.  I’d say, “Live and learn,” but you know what?  I’m not sure I’m smart enough to do the second part.

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