The Trouble with Islands, and Other Anomalies

I've been thinking about islands. Let me tell you how an island works. I always figured an island was a small sandy thing that sits around on the water, unattached to anything, usually inhabited by a lone palm tree & perhaps a really hairy man. This lost island floats about aimlessly on the calm sea, going where it will, or maybe staying where it is. The palm tree survives because it's roots go thru the sand to the ocean, to drink all it needs. The hairy man isn't so lucky, since there's no way of controlling this teeny meandering plot of land, and he won't ever be found. So he will die of exposure, if not first dehydration. That's an "island". Absolutely everyone knows this is how islands work. I even found a video, filmed in Ireland (even on our own River Liffey) that proves I'm not the only one who knows these things are facts.

So if you take a place like Ireland or Manhattan, that are both islands, and apply to them what you now know about islands, you'll get really confused. Like I did. I thought, "How can there be metros on Manhattan?" Then I thought, "Well obviously there can't be, since when the metro-guys were digging the tunnels, they would have run into the water under the island." Like when you're 6 years old and at the beach, and you're happily digging a pit to stick your little sister in, but the hole you're trying to throw dirt out of keeps slowly filling with salt water and ruining all your plans of being an only child. Because when you're that close to the water, your hole has obviously been dug too far down, and you've actually broken thru the Earth's crust to the ocean underneath it. But since there are in fact metros on Manhattan, I then decided that Manhattan as an island was just a really deep island, and the earth/sand it was located on top of was just thicker (it has to be because they definitely have more than one palm tree there). And those metro-diggers better not dig their magical spaceship transporter tubes TOO far down, or else just like at the beach, they'll open that one hole to the ocean, and then ALL the previous tunnels will fill up with salt water and kill everyone and possibly even sink the island of Manhattan.

Well. Usually, I tend to think of these kinds of things entirely in my own head, and naturally assume it's a correct thought that everyone else thinks & knows about, and only when I happen to voice these thoughts to someone else, out loud, do I become aware of the flaws in these assumptions. For example, when I asked Jon how Ireland stays where it is and why it doesn't just float off further into the ocean, the look on his face was enough to make me second-guess my previously assumed solid lines of logic. I have to give him my thanks for setting me straight. Thanks babe! Your literally uncontrollable laughter is so great for my self-esteem!

But in the end, there is good news, concerned family & friends! Jon & I won't probably die of exposure! If anything, we'll be drowned in rainfall, or stabbed in the face one too many times by rabid inside-out umbrellas in the wind. Hooray!