SURVIVOR - Pongo Bongo 4 - Conclusion

13 November 2013

720

R. Linda:

"I should have known it!" I swore in a whisper.

I didn't even have to mention the name, as me teammates all whispered as they looked up, "The Dragon . . . "

"I wish you'd give me some notice when you're coming round," Wolfie was saying to her.

"How much notice?" Dragon asked.

"Like three months' notice," Wolfie said looking annoyed she was stealing his thunder.

Yup, Tonya's mother was running the show. She seemed to be up above us throwing her weight around (which she has some to throw around she does) and now I knew, yes I knew I had been set up with all me "toadie" friends, as she called them!

"So how is it if the men keep winning challenges, and WE keep getting voted out do you expect to teach them a lesson and have us win this thing?" Tonya was asking her. "So much for woman power, Mom."

"I didn't think any of them would be good at puzzles!" Dragon cried. "BUT, I know for a fact that Gabriel eats tainted brownies, that's why he's good at puzzles he can't see straight so a puzzle is easy for him."

"He does? Since when?" Tonya asked with a head bob.

"I remember you telling me about a certain art show and then you remember the Amsterdam wedding?" Dragon asked.

"Oh mother, really? We had no clue about those art show brownies and he had no clue what he was eating in a foreign country!" Tonya stuck up for me, but why? Why was she on the OTHER side and why was she even taking my side?

"Well, anyway, because of that we can accuse him and that weaselly person (who you have to admit is not right in the head) of using enhancing drugs to win this thing!" Dragon surmised.

I realised then, that Dragon was talking in a German accent like she was Dr. Obrecht on General Hospital (yes, I know about THAT I be subject to that programme each night after the Diane Sawyer news show because me wife likes it). Just what was going on I wanted to know and was ready to march up there and give me secreted self away, but Tom W stopped me.

"NO!" He whisper-shouted. "Let's hear what else they have planned so we can un-plan it."

"Yar Cappy, you know throw an undead monkey wrench in the works." Captain Jaack whispered.

We missed an exchange between the irritated Wolfie and the Dragon, I only caught the last part.

"Have I been to Oz?" Dragon was incredulous at a question Wolfie had just asked her.

"I believe I can help you get there," he said.

"How's that?"

"I believe you have to be rendered unconscious and I could do the honours."

OHHH! What was going on up there? A wee bit of dissension in the ranks was there? Well, we decided to get out of Dodge because nothing more than in-fighting kept the conversation off anything worth our while. We went back to camp to make plans of our own (well as much as we could not knowing what the game consisted of the next day).


The next morning we wandered into the challenge and were the first tribe there. Wolfie looked harassed like he hadn't slept well, his usually perfect hair a bit tousled, and his usual snappily dressed self a bit dishevelled. He said nothing, no dazzling smile, no "Welcome guys, how are ya?" Notta. Something was up and we didn't have long to see what because the We Are Woman tribe came filing in and we noticed right off, that no one had been voted out. Seeing our surprise, Wolfie informed us this: "It was a non-elimination  round, so they are all still in the game."

"Non-elimination round? Isn't that the Amazing Race?" I said aloud.

Just then a coconut flew out of nowhere narrowly missing me and hitting Weasil on the noggin and well the usual happened, the coconut was in smithereens and the Weasil looked no worse for wear. I tell ya! I was suspicious now that those lobbed coconuts were meant for yours truly and were being lobbed at me by none other than me dragon-in-law. But that didn't stop Wolfie from telling us he thought we were spouting off over nothing and he was suspicious we were smoking weed, thus hallucinating a set-up.

"How do you figure?" I demanded.

"Just the other night I came by your camp looking for stolen sushi when I saw Weasil there twitching in his sleep."

"Aw common I was dreamin' I wuz paralysed." Weasil piped up.

"You were moving quite a lot so I don't think so." Wolfie spat back.

"I happen to know you and HER," I pointed at Mrs. Egduf, "have something going on. A fudge connection. I saw you handing off fudge to her!" I challenged Wolfie. "It's because she touts your good hair you are giving her FUDGE to stroke your ego!"

"Fudge connection? What fudge connection?" Mrs. E asked looking as innocent as she could which wasn't much for someone dressed in flowered purple underwear with orange Crocs.

"I'm going to join the circus, see how the other half lives," Tom W sighed fed up and throwing up his arms in frustration.

"I thought this WAS the circus, mate," Captain Jaack chimed in.

"All right let's get to the challenge," Wolfie cut us off like we never protested a thing. "Today's challenge consists of coconut bonking for real this time!" And he grinned like a demon at us because then he said, "Reward is, SUSHI," and with a flick of the wrist the tarp came off a table full of raw fish. "All the sushi you can eat AND if you win Survivor Pongo Bongo, you get sushi for life!"

Weasil groaned, "What sushi agin?" And then it sank in, "Hey, what happened to the million dollars?" As he yelled this at Wolfie a coconut came out of nowhere and bonked his hard head. The coconut rolled to the ground in a million pieces further amazing us of Weasil's harder-than-hard noggin. Piece of cake I thought, we'd put Weasil out front and let the ladies try as they might bonk him with coconuts. We'd win for sure. But the ladies realised this at the same time we did and protested the challenge. Wolfie, accommodating as always to the ladies agreed and then looking at both tribes like he'd had enough, decided instead to make this the final challenge.

"NO MORE PUZZLES!" Mrs. E shouted.

"Enough of wasting time," Wolfie glanced at Mrs. E. tossing her a piece of wrapped fudge, "the final competition is for the best players from each tribe to go all out for a game of PONGO BONGO! The tribe that wins gets to share the prize. So get together and decide who is facing who to toss and who, to drink."

I had stepped out of line to point and say, "LOOKIT THERE" over the fudge which was quickly unwrapped and popped into Mrs. E's mouth where a look of total ecstasy took over her face and she was far far away in Willie Wonka land. But I didn't get to protest, I was pulled back into a tribal huddle that was going on without me.

Everyone in my tribe knew what Pongo Bongo was, but me. But I soon found out. I stood there watching as staff came out with a floating inflatable game table equipped with 12 cup holders on each side. They moored it in the little lagoon in front of us. Then they put 2 ping pong balls in 2 clear plastic cups filled with water, at one end of the table.

Playing for our team was supposed to be our very own Captain Jaack, but when he heard it was beer and not rum used in the game, he wouldn't do it. So I suggested Weasil, but somehow it was ME they elected, the excuse being I was the tallest and had, therefore, the most hollow legs being Irish. I told them I had notta clue how to play this, but they shoved me out front anyway and into the lagoon where I ended up underwater for a moment after being pushed in without any ceremony.

The other tribe had selected Dewdropper which I overheard Mrs. E say before I went under, "Your hair will absorb the excess, doncha worry none." And she winked, like yeah sure it would.

"We need to look for a sign in the sky, you know like the red fireball that Grabiare sent," Dew said looking up into the sunny blue.

She stood there for a good two minutes and nothing, as a lot of eye-rolling went on behind her. Tonya quickly got hold of her and set her at the opposite end of the Pongo Bongo table next to Mrs. E. who was up to her neck in water.

"The winning tribe each wins an eight-foot Pongo Bongo table just like this one. Here they can take beer pong to the pool if they have one with this heavy gauge vinyl constructed table that inflates quickly and easily. And, you can flip it over and use it as a raft as well." Wolfie was saying that like he was on QVC.

I was squeezing the seawater out of me shirt when Captain Jaack came sloshing up to the table and said to Dewdropper, "Give me a Snow White and two dwarfs please."

"This is not a coffee bar," Tom W whispered to him as Dew looked on stunned not comprehending what he was talking about. He sloshed back disappointed as Wolfie told him in no uncertain terms to "CLEAR OFF!" Yes, the Wolf was at the end of his tether for sure.

So on each end of the table in a triangle, were staked 12 red cups in a pyramid. It was decided Tom W would toss and on the other team Mrs. E would toss, with me and Dew doing the drinking. Oi!

Just to get the women off their game Tom W said to them, only loud enough they could hear, "Prohibition was a law, and so was women not having the vote . . . " Well, as you can imagine this went completely over Dew's blond Afro, but not Mrs. E. She raised herself as tall as her diminutive 4' would allow and with her face turning purple with rage went to open her pie hole, but before she could get stinging (and we knew they would be) words in Tom W's direction, a piece of fudge came slicing in from a left-handed toss that Wolfie lobbed to cut her off before she could go bonkers on the laughing lad to me right.

Wolfie was standing knee-deep in the lagoon far enough away not to get beer spattered, but close enough to hear any whispering.

"All right, the object of the game is to get the beer pong balls into the top layer of cups. If a ball falls into a cup below the top layer it doesn't count. If you get a ball into you're opponent's cup, they have to drink off that cup before play can continue, and so on and so forth." Wolfie informed us.

We had drawn straws for who went first and it was naturally the girl's team. Mrs. E was almost up to her neck in water being so short, so we were informed that Wolfie would hold her up out of the water so she could throw clear and not be encumbered by water mass. This I thought was cheating, but no one said anything, so I kept me pie hole shut.

"Try the arch when you throw," Wolfie said to Mrs. E as he held her up and he being over six feet tall put her entirely out of the lagoon which to me was some blatant cheating going on. And worse, telling her how to throw was a violation of any rules there might be with such a game I thought and said so to Tom W.

"NO FAIR you're helping her!" Tom W protested.

"Oh sorry," Wolfie said, but he wasn't, not really. He lowered her down a wee bit, and she gave it a toss and yup she got our first cup. She then threw the second pong ball and missed. I fished out the first and drank the cup of beer. Oi! Japanese beer takes some getting used to, I'll tell ya that much.

We got the same results but when Dew went to drain the cup Mrs. E accidentally on purpose elbowed the cup and the beer flew into that sponge of blond hair and Wolfie let it count as drank.

"What cheaters," I whispered to Tom W who nodded, as he lined up a throw.

Not to pain you with this procedure, it went on and on and on and I drank and drank and drank and Dew drank maybe three cups of beer before she was wobbly legged and the rest Mrs. E accidentally on purpose elbowed into the growing mass of beer hair on Dew's head.

We were losing! Yes, we were and it sucked. I was lurching about in the water retrieving the missed pong balls and going under more than once. I came up to hear Tom W. saying to Mrs. E., "Obama is only rewarding the young and strong who voted for him."

"Yeah, but if Obama walked on water his detractors would say it's because he doesn't know how to swim!" Mrs. E. shot back.

"You'll see the mess this thing is very shortly. Oh, that's right, you move rocks, too busy to see the mess." Tom W said smugly.  "Did you know Obama's friends are exempt from all this rubbish?" and "Your Medicare is being gutted to pay for Obamacare." And on and on he went until she couldn't hit a cup for the fury she was in. "Ok ok, I finally admit I was wrong about Obama!" She said frustrated that her wee arm was nearly out of its socket and her teammate was missing. Well, not exactly missing, Dew's hair was so full of Japanese beer it had gotten heavy and pulled her under, she was floating twenty feet from the Pongo Bongo table her nose out of the water and the only way she was staying alive.

Wolfie sloshed over to retrieve her, her eyes staring glassily up at the sky still waiting (we supposed) for a sign from Grabiare that things would go the We Are Woman tribe's way. Wolfie pulled her into the shoreline where Weasil and Tonya each grabbed large sections of her 'Fro' and squeezed the beer and water out.

We had won Survivor Bongo Pongo by default. Yes, we did, the We Are Woman tribe was too exhausted to protest and so it was we now each owned a Pongo Bongo table, a shite-load of sushi we did not want and the rest of the Japanese beer which we also did not want.

It was as we were all laid out supine, in semi-exhaustion that the island began to shake as the pointed-toed shoes came into our views. Yes, the Dragon had arrived dragging her broom behind her in utter defeat that she could not defeat the MEN.

She stood over our panting selves with a smirk on her face.

"The jig is up Dragon," I said up at her, with a hoarse voice from swallowing so much seawater. "Yup, the whole shooting bang, of YOU pulling the strings, defaming me good name, pitting me against me own wife and friends. Shame on ya."

"Well, we will see who won and who lost come election time when Hillary Clinton is taking the oath of office." That was it, she said that and vanished into thin air. We all sat up and looked around, and we noticed Wolfie was missing.

"Where'd he go?" Dew asked tearing up.

"Really?" I said, "You worried she took him with her on her broom?"

"Uh-huh," she sobbed. We sat there watching her hair absorb the tears and start to grow again, we had to move back as the hair began moving towards us like it would absorb us too. I felt tresses of it winding around me ankles and pulling me along the sand (which chafed by the way) and into the mass of yellow Afro. I started to scream that I was being eaten alive by hair (of all things) when me scream became real and I woke meself up. I was labouring for breath, and feeling to make sure I was all there. I had in me sleep wrapped the bedclothes around me legs, and that's what I was feeling and I realised I was not being sucked up into a huge blond Afro with the rest of the tribes. I was in amok sweat for about twenty minutes getting me bearings. I tell ya!

NO MORE SUSHI FOR ME! No, no, no, noppers, DONE!

Gabe
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