Six Characters in Search of a Blogger

AUTHOR’S NOTE:  My apologies to the people of Hawaii and the state’s native-born son, President-Elect Barack Obama, for any stereotypical generalizations put forth in this blog post.  I can’t help it.  I was born with the pasty skin of a New Englander and a certain warped view of gorgeous tropical places largely perpetrated by 70s television.

If I were a wedding photographer in Hawaii, maybe I would have taken this picture.

Myriad blues and turquoises of the sea and sky.  The gorgeous, bright contrasts of tropical flowers on green foliage.  Palm trees dancing gently in the wind.  Sand soft as powder.  Blood orange sunsets that make you gasp.

I’d like to think bridezillas lose their “zilla” in Hawaii, just because it is so darn beautiful.  At least I’d hope so, if I was a wedding photographer.

I would, of course, be constantly wearing laserproof sunscreen as I worked.  Native children would be as blinded by my whiteness during the day as they would by the flash of my camera at night, and develop some coded joke about me in Hawaiian.  (Like “the white blob” or “the thing that glows in the dark.”)  And I would laugh at the joke, because good weather just makes you mellow, right?  I’d just be an awesome person who always felt awesome and who would say “awesome” all the time.  I think that’s what constant, perfect weather does to the brain.  You lose your cynicism and sarcasm and snarkiness.  But without those three things, my big hobbies, what would I do with all of my free time?

The Bradys taught us: beware of the tiki.

Well, for starters, I guess I would grow pineapples in my backyard.  They taste good, and besides, I got a pineapple corer as a wedding gift a couple of years ago that I’ve never used so it would give me a chance to finally try it out.  And I would go to hula/Pilates fusion classes.  Maybe play around with variations on poi cuisine combined with recipes from the Food Network.  And I wouldn’t miss my outrigger canoe racing.  I would bring along my boom box to play the Hawaii Five-O music in the background.

Thanksgiving would be a ginormous luau with roasted suckling pig on a spit for everybody instead of turkey.  But I would definitely have cranberry sauce, you can’t have Thanksgiving without the cranberry sauce.  From the can.  And I would tell my children about the evil white man Pilgrims who used Jesus and viruses to kill the locals.  So three important lessons for them from the holiday:  1. our ancestors were bad men, 2. Christianity can kill, and 3. it’s VERY important that they always wash their hands.  (Because I would have had a gaggle of children, of course, fathered by my husband as well as various tourists to the islands and guests at weddings I’d worked at over the years.  I’m guessing the tropical awesomeness of Hawaii would make me uberfertile and up for it all the time.)

I would volunteer at the local tiki taboo society, intent on discouraging tourists from picking up stray idols, warning them about errant tarantulas and keeping them out of the clutches of jealous archaeologists that look like Vincent Price.  (Beware of archaeologists, people!  Have you learned nothing from the Brady family?)  I would be a part of a Don Ho tribute band, because I think I could dig the ukelele, do my own riff on “Tiny Bubbles.”  You know it.

What else would this idyllic Hawaiian life entail?  Maybe my husband would be a surfer by day (could you at least try, honey?) and an astronomer by night, and together we would go to the Keck Observatory and spend our evenings looking for killer asteroids that might destroy the earth.  On weekends we would go to Kilauea and watch the lava flow, where I would obsessively fight the urge to lick its glowing gooeyness because it looks like radiant taffy.

Oh yes, and I would take photos.  Of brides and grooms.  But that, I think, would be the boring part.