My Friend, Chuck Noland

Chuck and I had gotten off to a bad start. You see, he'd been trying to make fire when the stick he was using snapped and cut his hand. He started hopping around in pain and throwing things around. I was one of those things: he just picked me up and hurled me against a tree.

After he calmed down, he bandaged his hand and came back. Chuck must've heard me yelling at him, because he came over and picked me up. He'd grabbed me with his bleeding hand, and I was covered in blood. But, just to show he was sorry, he gave me a brand new face, took me out of my box, and set me down on a stone while he tried again to make fire.

Trying to be helpful, I tried telling him that there was a hole in the wood he was rubbing to make fire, and that the air would blow out any flame that caught, but he wouldn't listen: Chuck just looked up at me strangely. He asked me for a match or something dumb like that (how would I have a match? I don't smoke!). I guess the heat was making him crazy. Oh well, in the end, I was right.

We started on a long, rocky four year relationship together on the island. Over the years, Chuck not only told me about his life back in Memphis, his girlfriend Kelly, and all about his job at FedEx, but also helped keep my face looking nice and sharp and even gave me a new hairdo. Heck, he even painted my likeness on the wall of the cave.

We talked every day, but it was hard, being marooned on that island, watching as my once proud fullness gradually softened and deflated. (I wasn't the only one, as it turned out: check out these before and after pictures of Chuck! Wow, talk about a crash diet!).

It was pretty bad for Chuck, too. I mean, he even had to do his own dentistry for a while!

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