Writing in Cursive to Airplane Pilots

For the first few days I tried to survive and to get rescued like the stranded always do, somehow, even if it isn’t until the end of the story.  Then it was almost exciting; I was disoriented by my glee at having turned up on this beach.  I wasn’t excited because the situation was hopeless, I was excited because what I had to do to make the situation hopeful was clear.  I’m a survival manual junkie.

Even though I was exhausted and injured, I became a flurry of activity preparing for my survival.  Suddenly all those books I had read, and had been ridiculed for reading, became urgently important. I hadn’t been there long enough to know how much air and boat traffic came near this island.  Not only was it possible to be found, and not only did my survival depend upon my handiwork, but each time I whittled a sharp stick, found a container to collect rain water, or ingeniously caught a fish, it felt like I mattered to someone.  I didn’t have a mirror, but on the third day I could feel my stubble and my salt-matted hair and I knew I was getting somewhere, I was accomplishing something.

You wouldn’t think this would matter when your life is on the line, but surviving is not all glamorous action--there is a lot of waiting, of thinking more than perhaps you would like to.  You begin to catalogue what you have, how much of what you have eaten, and worry about what could happen.  And the actions become like a routine, and your mind wanders.  You create games for yourself to play; you start throwing pebbles into half a coconut shell.  At first it was difficult enough at six feet.  Now you throw from twenty feet.

There hasn’t ever been a glimpse of any human presence.  It has been--well, you stopped counting.  Why bother starting a fire for all to see every night?  It’s perfectly warm.  You no longer notice your growing beard.  You flick your lighter, sometimes letting the gas flare up just for fun.  In the middle of fishing you go for a swim without catching anything.  Some days you think of what you need to do and keep thinking about it--there’s a lot of it--and you bury your feet in the beach, feeling the cool, damp sand underneath on your skin.  You wiggle your toes.  It doesn’t feel quite like how you imagined wiggling your toes in the sand feeling.

This morning you decide to write a message for the next airplane.  I don’t see one.  I haven’t seen one fly by, ever.  You scratch huge letters in the sand with your feet, like you’re dancing.  After the first letter you wonder how to get the next letter.  Will you jump, I wonder?  You kick the first letter into a mess, and start over in cursive.  I’m not sure a pilot will be able to read your cursive.  And what do they need a message for anyhow?  They’ll see me.  I’ll hear the plane from miles away.  I’ll yell and wave my arms around.  And if they don’t see you, it might be better that they don’t.  You’ll mess the whole thing up, as you’ve proven by trying to write in cursive to airplane pilots.  How do you know they’ll even read English?  How do you know they won’t read “GO AWAY” where you wrote “HELP”?