What Me Hand Did at the Mall

Since none of you have probably ever heard of this “Lost” show, let me help you to understand what’s going on. Subsequent to our last discussion, the first thing you need to know is that if you’re an attractive babe…don’t go making any long range plans. You’ll almost for sure be dead by next episode. Only the stars are immune from this sorry plight. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t still make a cameo appearance from time to time because ghosts are welcome on this strange island. You should know, too, that cleavage is another welcome sight.

While some people are cured of deadly maladies and want to hang around the island for a while, others are selfishly anxious to be rescued. This creates problems with a pair of couples in particular. This middle-aged black gal with cancer gets re-united with her middle-aged husband who’s a white dentist and who is keen to write stuff in the white sand with black rocks. But he gets no further than, “This unhappy situation that we find ourselves in…” before his wife—who was all sweetness and light before they got reunited, reveals that she is actually Mrs. Satan. And she won’t help at all. They argue and he threatens to drill holes through all of her teeth without using novocain. But she won’t budge. And not just because she’s overweight. Because she's Mrs. Satan.

Then there’s this South Korean couple who were running away to escape their marital problems. She’s a business tycoon’s daughter who wisely married a fisherman’s son with an ugly disposition—even though the gal’s father had thoughtfully promoted him from shoeshine boy all the way up to hit man. Still, neither are satisfied and they fight all the time. She forgets to mention to Jen that her former lover has taught her to speak English so imagine his surprise when he learns of this fact after a couple of months. He’s so embarrassed and disgusted that he helps Michael build a raft.

It’s hard for Michael to find time to do this because he spends most of his time and energy in micromanaging his son, Walt, and Walt’s dog, Vincent. Vincent hates Michael and shows him his teeth. But Michael, being a city boy, doesn’t understand what this means and thinks that Vincent is grinning at him. But finally the raft is ready and will sail the next morning. No it won’t, because Walt has secretly set it on fire during the night and it burns to a crisp. John Locke knows that Walt did it because they’ve played a lot of backgammon together. So John blames it on those slimebally “Others,” the tribe that keeps kidnapping them and killing them and knocking them unconscious.

But it’s not all that uncommon to be knocked unconscious. In fact, all survivors’ job descriptions spell out their duties as: "Argue and throw fits; collect mangos, coconuts and interesting seashells; and prepare to often be knocked unconscious and to knock other folks unconscious." So no one is exempt from plenty of fighting and roughhousing. And all the girls, especially before they die, are exceptionally handy with their dukes and also, amazingly, know a good thing or two about Mixed Martial Arts. Most of them could kick Mike Tyson’s sorry butt in a heartbeat. And several of them prove it by beating up strapping fellows like Sawyer. Sawyer says “aint” a lot and did not attend an Ivy League college.

Sawyer has blackmailed Kate into some lengthy French-kissing but Dr. Jack doesn’t know about it or else there would be trouble in River City. Despite the fact that, early on, Jack didn’t want to be cast in the role of the survivors’ leader, he has become just that. He’s exceptionally smart because he passed his Medical Boards, and to prove it he is capable of making a correct decision darn near twenty percent of the time! This creates more arguing and unconsciousness and allows him to also have a turn kissing Kate. Locke keeps saying that they’re all predestined to be on the island and should keep a good attitude. And he uses this good attitude to knock people who don’t agree with him unconscious.

Just about everyone, after a few weeks, has developed an attitude of: shoot first and ask questions not at all. So Jack’s team and the Others get a lot of satisfaction out of gunning each other down, despite the fact that they need to keep a sharp eye on preventing the world from ending by pushing a button every hour and a half or so. And escaping from monsters.

There’s this Nigerian, Mr. Echo, who was a murdering druglord that coaxed his brother, a priest, into flying out of Africa with 90,000 religious statues filled with heroine. Which is good news for rock ‘n roller Charlie, who’s a drug fiend and sweet on Clair and her baby. But in the end, after the plane from Nigeria crashed on the island, it led in Mr. Echo taking the next logical career step, by himself joining the clergy—even though he didn’t graduate from seminary.

So he gets Charlie to help him and they start building a church but then Mr. Echo develops issues, and these are of a nature that sics this monster on him. And this is where you really have to take your hat off to those animal trainers on the set. It is their job to train nearly 40 million black flies into forming up into this scary-looking cloud that acts sorta like a tornado and is capable of wreaking havoc. Well, it wreaks havoc with Mr. Echo and leaves him to bleed vociferously from his every bodily orifice…until he is quite dead and no longer able to cavort with the ghost of his brother.

Hurley weighs less than a ton and enjoys snacking. One day he ate a whale that washed up on the beach. Also, he is being paid proportionately to the number of times he can say the word, “Dude.” He’s a daffy and fun-loving guy who’s never quite so happy as when he’s incarcerated in mental institutions, where he can laze around all day in a big open robe and pajamas. But he’s a deceptively fine athlete and proves it by smashing first Sawyer’s and then Dr. Jack’s guts at ping pong, and then he teaches Dr. Jack a lesson in basketball by smacking him in a game of ”Horse.” And sometimes Kate sees a horse in the jungle but doesn’t think too much about it. Why should she? This is a strange place.

There’s more, but don’t worry: I’ll keep you abreast of developments.
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I was down at the large City Centre Mall on Thursday night and that’s not a good idea, because it gets incredibly crowded on weekends—including lots of Saudis who have driven over from Dharan. I was alone and bored and so I had to devise my own entertainment.

I went into the food court. A lot of Bahraini women wear the black abaya but not so many wear veils. But some do and it’s always entertaining to watch them eat. They’ll jab something onto the fork and then lift the bottom of the veil and thereby guide the morsel secretly to the mouth. Then drop the veil and chew. As one of them was lifting the veil I inserted me hand under it and tickled her chin. Aghast, she allowed a piece of chicken to fall into her lap. Her eyes stared through the slit at me in something between terror and “I’m totally aghast and don’t know what to do next.”

Leaving her to her quandary, I wandered into the entry store of the Wahoo Water Park next and was attracted to the swim fins, sometimes known as duckfeet. I discarded my flip flops and stuck a pair of fins on me feet. Then I waddled around the crowded shop quacking noisily as I slapped the fins loudly on the floor. This totally befuddled both young and old. They observed intently. But I broke their reverie by shouting, “The sharks have gotten loose! The sharks have gotten loose! Run for your life!”

Bahrainis almost all have a darn good grasp of English and they understood immediately, panicking and running wildly out of the shop. The news of the shark outbreak soon reached through the turnstiles and into the water park itself and soon hundreds of bathing costume-attired fun seekers ran screaming and wild-eyed out of the entranceway and into the mall. Puddles of water were everywhere and some people were slipping and falling into piles because of it. It’s interesting to note that none of these folks had stopped to analyze the fact that there are no sharks in water parks. It’s not an aquarium, you know.

I walked along a ways and was attracted to the Marble Slab Creamery. Expensive ice cream. I watched how the workers dipped a flavor onto the marble slab and worked it with sort of a trowel thing for a while before putting it into a cup. I crowded to the front of the line and ordered caramel pecan. I noticed that the final product, before being put into the cup, was fashioned into a shape that was about as big as your hand. So I stopped the worker from putting mine in a cup and instead told her to put it onto me proferred palm. She was quite puzzled, not to mention reluctant. So I screamed in her face, “Just do it!” She fearfully, with a shriek, complied.

My scream and her responding scream, mixed in with all of the hubbub the other customers were making at my having taken cutsies in line had attracted a pair of security personnel. I hurried to them and showed them the slice of caramel pecan in me palm. I turned and, pointing, shouted to them, “SHE did it!” Outraged, they hustled to her and roughly placed her under arrest amid all the confusing chatter, accusations, and finger pointing (some at me). Cruel and Unusual Punishment would be the charge against her.

After I finished eating the ice cream off me hand (Darn! I guess I forgot to pay for it!) as I walked along, I noticed another familiar sight. Two local women were walking along in front of their combined six young children who were being attended by one of the lady’s harried Sri Lankan maid. This gal was having a devil of a time in trying to keep the unruly kids in control, as they abused her fearfully. I walked up behind one 4-year-old and whacked her loudly three times on her ample backside.

The child screamed in a combination of disbelief and pain. The mothers whirled around to see what was happening. That’s when I shouted “Leesh?!” as I pointed at the maid. Leesh, of course, means “Why?” The astonished mommies raced at the maid and began to beat her soundly. The children were all kicking her. But I didn’t watch for long, choosing instead to move right on along.

I saw a Godiva’s Chocolate shop. Very expensive (and good) Belgian chocolates in a great many varieties. First, I had the Filipina gal give me as many sample tastes of her wares as she would before she finally balked and asked what I would like. So I took about ten minutes pointing out maybe two hundred different chocolates that I wanted packaged up. She set to the task at a rapid pace and soon a large mass of chocolates was accumulating. That’s when I slipped away into the crowd, saying to myself, “Ha! It’ll take her two hours to put all of those back where they belong.”

Then I went out to the parking garage and found me car. I let the air out of all of the tires of the two cars on either side and then drove away. Me hand was steady on the wheel.
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I told you we would play Ahli and we did. It was a big crowd and the Ahli throng was rabid in the support of their underdogs. They were underdogs because their American player was suspended for two games for having a physical confrontation the game before, against Hala.

What had happened was that as the game was ending one of the Hala players took a swing at Ahli’s point guard, meaning to loosen several of his teeth. But this player, Shakur (an excellent point guard), ducked in the nick of time. That’s when teammate Johnny rushed over and pushed the Hala player. The Turkish referees hadn’t seen the swing, but saw the push and Mr. Taylor was ejected…drawing an automatic two-game suspension. Pretty tough break.

So they played us short-handed but I knew they, the defending league champs, had enough good players to make a tough game of it. We led by six points at half as Ahli was competing strongly. Then we opened up a 22 point third quarter lead and I was hoping for an ending with no drama. But it wasn’t to be. In the fourth quarter Ahli made seven 3-pointers and our lead was down to two. We pulled away a little at the end to win by ten in a game we had to win to stay alive in this Cup. Our local hero, Mohammed Hassan, who had 31 points the previous game, scored 36 points, including six of seven from long distance, and Lamond chipped in 31 points and 23 rebounds.

Tomorrow night we face Manama, who hasn’t lost a game in a couple of months, and we need to beat them in order to qualify for the best-two-of-three final for which they’ve already qualified. But M.H. (just mentioned) turned an ankle in the Ahli game and though he hobbled through the second half he hasn’t practiced since then and told me last night he doesn’t know if he can play or not. We’re in a degree of trouble if he can’t play. The gym will be packed to the rafters and the drums will pound. Hope Manama doesn’t pound us.