ESSAY
If I Were Stranded on a Desert Isle, What Three Things Would I Want With Me
Something to occupy my mind
Published in
2 min readOct 12, 2022
This is a response to Caitlin McColl’s “What if…” series. “What if… You were stranded on a desert isle, what three things would you want with you?”
I’ll assume I would find food, water, and shelter. Otherwise, the list would devolve into the mundanely practical.
— A library, including my reading list from the last decade and the works the Christian right-wing wants to ban from schools.
— Rod Serling’s ghost, which would entertain me with twisted, ironic tales.
— A chess set with which the ghost and I would occupy ourselves otherwise. If it didn’t know how to play, I’d teach it from the library volumes of Bobby Fischer’s games, but none of Hans Niemann’s, since neither of us would tolerate cheating.
