When I used to watch Gilligan's Island in 4:00 re-runs after school every day, I would wonder whose idea it was for the plot, how many writers there were, how they decided who could come and visit, what device they would use to prevent the visitor from rescuing them, how they must plan in advance not to have too-similar plots near each other, and the re-runs must be kept in that same order too. I wondered about them changing the theme song. At first it had said, "the movie star, and the rest," but in later seasons it said, "the movie star, the professor and Mary Ann," and I wondered whether they had resung the whole thing or just spliced in that line, because it sounded the same as it had before. And had they done it because the actors complained? Their agents complained? I wondered whether the pedal-powered washing machine (or whatever it was) really worked by the pedals, or whether it was just secretly plugged in, and if so, where did the wires run? I wondered if much of it was on indoor sets. How deep was that water? (As an adult, I saw what's left of the set at Universal Studios. Cool! Outside! Actual little lake.) When I would see a show the second time, I'd look around for things I had missed the first time. I would re-write lines in my mind, things that could have been funnier, or sounded more in character for that person. I'd wonder who knew more about hammock making, the captain or the professor? Maybe Ginger or Mary Ann knew macramé. When there was a show that didn't have one of the actors in it, I'd wonder whether he was sick or on vacation or what? And if an actor misses the filming of a sitcom, does he still get paid? I wondered about them having to keep their hair the same for years, and which of them might be wearing wigs. Where were they supposed to be getting nail polish and lipstick? Hair spray? I wondered if the professor was a physics professor or engineering, or what, and whether he would lose his job at the university. I wondered about that Mr. Magoo voice on Thurston Howell. I wondered about Amelia Earhart. I wondered about the soundtrack music. Did they just have little themes they pushed a button on during final edit, or was each show done separately? I wondered if the fruit was real or props. I wondered about cameras--where were they? Did they have to sweep the dirt between takes? I wondered if the guy who played the lost WWII pilot was really Japanese. I could think more during an episode of Gilligan's Island than most other people I knew could think in a whole week. I didn't bother to ask my parents any of the questions. They would have thought it was stupid to be thinking them.

So to all outside appearances (except to my cousin, Nada, who was my age) I was just zoning out, involved in the plot of another 25 minutes of Gilligan's Island. That wasn't true at all.

I got the book Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist from the library. It sounds pretty cool. Howard Gardner is one of the featured scientists.

But this is what I opened it up to when I first looked at the book...kind of a different *take* (and pretty funny, too!) on the value of Gilligan's Island in someone's life:

Robert M. Sapolsky, professor of biological sciences at Sanford and of neurology at Stanford's School of Medicine. Author of numerous science books and makes annual trips to East Africa to study a population of wild baboons.

From the book:

How did I wind up as scientist? By all logic, I should start with Gilligan's Island, a sitcom that entranced me when I was an eight-year-old growing up in Brooklyn. In it, an unlikely collection of seven people go on an afternoon's boat ride out of Hawaii, get waylaid by a storm, and wind up stranded on a desert island, where they remain for years. The motley crew includes the skipper, his first mate, a wealthy upper-crust couple, a famous actress, a farm girl and "the Professor," who is otherwise nameless. He has every book ever written somewhere in the trunk he was marooned with; he can answer any challenging question you can think of; he is forever saving everyone by rigging up some sort of scientific device. The Professor can do anything (except get them off the island, of course).

While all this was impressive, what really got to me was his presumed connection to Mary Ann, the pretty farm girl in flannel shirt and pigtails. This connection I derived solely from the show's theme song, which went "There's Gilligan, the skipper, too, a millionaire and his wife, a movie star, the *Professor and Mary Ann...*"

Because their names were linked, I assumed that the two of them must have had something going. In my prepubescent fog, this involved a lot of hand-holding. So it was only natural that I wanted to grow up and be the Professor and spend my time out in some remote field site.

Quoted by permission of Dr. Robert Sapolsky and Anne Ohman both, 2/28/05

FIRST FEMALE AFRICAN-AMERICAN ASTRONAUT credited Star Trek with her interest in science.