Disclaimer haiku:
Do I own Lost? No,
Or they would have washed up on
Dinotopia.
Note: Hurley rocks. Seriously, he's my favorite character; I think it must be the hair.
Big thanks to Cassie for the (highly) unexpected motivation.
He's not one to sit around and sulk.
Bad choice of words.
Obviously, he is one to sit around. But he's not sulking when he does, no way. Can't sit around and think about all the mistakes and ill luck and stupid, stupid things that've happened or he'd just get depressed. Then he'd probably start crying. And there's nothing more pathetic than a crying fat dude... get all blotchy and tear-stained and even puffier than usual. Not that anyone could really tell on the last part. He could, though, and he's just big, not sloppy, and it would bug him.
Besides, he's got a sense of humor. (Has to, with a lifetime of frizzed-out clown hair.) It's hard to sulk when you're looking for the funny stuff. Making other people laugh - or at least snort and shake their heads. Pretty easy. Most of the time he doesn't even try and it happens anyway.
That's his job, he's found out. Everyone has their little niche on this crazy damn island, and that's his: Humor. Comic relief for the doc. Keeping things light. Getting everyone else up off of their asses and out of their sulks.
That and sorting through luggage. He likes both jobs. He even gets to sit down for the second one.
Ha! A joke.
Yeah, what a niche. And man, how he fills it.
Ha ha! There he goes again. That goofy fat dude. Never know what he's gonna say or do.
He is, of course, more than just someone with good comedic timing and a few hundred extra pounds - which are being sweated off into the jungle a heck of a lot slower than he'd kinda anticipated - but most of the time it doesn't bother him to forget it, to let the others forget.
All the others. All the forty-odd lucky survivors. They've got a doctor, a soldier, a hunter, a thief, foreign people, a kid, a dog (who has a damn easy job, by the way), a pregnant lady, a dude for everybody to hate on, and a bunch of other people he's barely gotten to know despite being, you know, stranded on a desert island.
But no one else like him. No one big, fat, and funny, with fright-wig hair and permanent heatstroke. No one else who remembers that even the friggin' cavemen had fun and played games in between desperate bids for survival, and that was in a godforsaken ice age full of savage giant animals, not a lush tropical rainforest with just a few monsters and lots of boars.
And he's not one to sit around and sulk. Plus, he goes through the luggage.
Perfect. Like stars aligning.
Or something.
So he built a golf course. Why the hell not? He had the clubs and he had the idea and it's not like he had something else to do. Half a day of his time - less than that, even - and everyone feels better, everyone's laughing and smiling, talking about stuff that doesn't matter instead of being tense and scared and miserable and sulky.
That's his job. Not to get them rescued, not to keep them alive until then, but to keep 'em all sane. And if it means he has to be the lighthearted goofy fat dude to do it, well - at least it's mostly a job that lets him sit down.
Ha!