This piece is a little off the beaten trail; I had a horrible week and didn’t get a chance to write about a Teddy Bear named Muhammad or a retarded president over-riding the free market to freeze interest rates.  Just try and get a loan now without perfect credit!  Anyway, Mike and I are off to hunt pigs, tally-ho…

If you were married in the Catholic Church like I was you probably got to sit down with your priest and answer questions the Church wanted you to think about before embarking on this lifelong commitment.  I recall the most notable question of this inquiry was, “If your spouse was unfaithful, would you forgive them?”  The Church clearly wanted you to answer yes to that one.

While I think the Church does a pretty good job at helping couples work through this transitional period, I think there is at least one more question they ought to add to their repertoire.

So here is the setup:

You become stranded on a deserted Tropical Island after a shipwreck.  There is plenty of food to sustain you—all the white rice you can eat (don’t tell me white rice doesn’t grow on tropical islands, that’s not the point).  There are some tropical fruits—bananas, papayas, and coconuts, but these take many hours and much effort to procure each day.  There is adequate shelter; you are blessed with a temperate climate and a beautiful blue clear water bay where you can swim and refresh yourself.  Now you can choose: each afternoon you are greeted by an insistently amorous stranger of the opposite sex (same sex if you are homosexual; I don’t want to leave anyone out—atleast one column I write ought to be politically correct) who will visit with you for thirty minutes, or a lovely bowl of rich ice cream any flavor you wish.  You can choose only one, and your stay on this island is to last five years.

At first glance, you might impulsively be driven to answer one way or another.  If you are a 19 year old male running around with a rock in your pants 90% of the time we know what your answer is going to be and you don’t need to play.  This question is for the thoughtful individual with a little maturity under his/her belt who understands, sex, like ice cream, can get dull if regimented to such a specific and non-spontaneous setting.

The answer to the question might not hinge on what you would most likely look forward to each day at four in the afternoon, but what you would most be able to tolerate day after day; the relentless onslaught of tasty ice cream presented amidst a diet solely comprised of rice, or the attentions of the amorous stranger offering nothing in the way of companionship other than determined persistent sexual contact.

I originally thought this question would be answered right along the gender preferences society assumes, however, after trying it out on some of my married buddies with children who measure their sexual occurrences in weeks or months, instead of hours or days, and I subsequently pressed them suggesting this was not a take it or leave it decision, but an all or nothing decision where denying either the consumption of ice cream or the amorous advances of the mysterious stranger would relegate the remaining stay on the island without either, no one seemed to answer the question easily.

It seems to me the most compatible couples would tend to make the same choice, although I might be wrong.

I wonder if the Catholic Church will add this one to their list?

Copyright 2007 Jim Pontillo