Fantasy Island

One of my favorite things to do with my paternal grandmother was to watch television shows that were outlawed in my own house. I know it wasn't really the verboten programming that made my sleepovers with her special, that was all Grandmom, but I did love watching a good episode of The Love Boat. Especially when we watched it on her little television in her beautiful purple bedroom.

It's not that my parents disapproved of The Love Boat, they just thought it was, how do you say?, cheestastic. Which it was, and it was the main reason I enjoyed it so much. Being five and totally cheestastic myself. I loved to watch the passenger list at the beginning of the show while my grandmother told me about all the real acting work they had done before their voyage on The Pacific Princess. It seemed funny to me that people could have done something better than The Love Boat. Better than The Love Boat? Not possible.

Fantasy Island aired on the same night as The Love Boat, but I never watched that. I didn't really get the premise, and it sort of creeped me out that people would pay an exorbitant fee to be whisked to some Pacific island with a smooth-talking stranger who could fulfill their kooky fantasies.

Time changes everything, though, because now I wonder how I sat through The Love Boat, while the premise of Fantasy Island sounds completely lovely to me. Except all my fantasies can be carried out right here in my home. I wonder if Ricardo Montalban would give me a discount for that?

My favorite fantasy starts with Rob taking the day off from work. Then he and the children disappear while I am left alone to complete every household task, in the exact order that I want, from start to finish without being interrupted by fighting or crying or pooping or vomiting or cooking food or serving food or yelling about the ungrateful people who won't eat the food that they asked for nine hundred times in a row.

I would wash the kitchen floor without ever once having to say: The floor is wet. Please don't step on it. I said the floor is wet. Wet!! I just washed it! Get off of it! Yes, you! Backtrack in the footprints that you've already made and GET.OFF.THE.WET.FLOOR!

I would clean the bathroom and leave the door open for ventilation, instead of closing myself up in the Vapor Box of Nerve Damage in an effort to keep the baby out of the toilet water while I'm scrubbing an entire week's worth of toothpaste blobs and spit out the sink bowl. And this is after a conversation like this: Please keep your sister occupied for ten minutes while I wipe down the bathroom. Your little sister - I'm pretty sure your older sister can occupy herself. Well, look at a book with her. Or play trains. I know she puts trains in her mouth, but I think they can take it for a few minutes. I know you don't want her to, but babies do that sometimes. OK, stop crying. I said stop crying. Oh, for Pete's sake.

I could wash windows and not be trailed by a pre-schooler licking the windows behind me. I could fold laundry, leave it on the couch to answer the phone, and come back to find it still folded, instead of clutched in the chubby fist of a toddler who has a serious laundry fetish. I could vacuum and not find a cracker ground into the carpet thirty seconds later.

Whew, fantasy indeed! I'm getting a little hot just thinking about it all. I think I might just pay a pretty penny for all that . . . Tattoo? Is that you calling me?