First mate's log:
May 5, 1967
It's the Skipper's birthday and I don't know what to get him. I don't always get people gifts but I feel like I should get him something because he's my best friend, and I think it's his 45th birthday, although he won't tell me his age. (Maybe it's his 50th.)
I did find a ring but that's not exactly a gift a guy can give another guy. I'll probably just make him a card, since we have plenty of paper. The ring is a plain gold band and I'm wearing it on my pinky so no one thinks I'm secretly engaged or something. I don't know who it belongs to, but with all the visitors we've had, someone might've dropped it weeks, months, or even years ago and none of us found it before.
Carol Martin's diary:
May 6, 1967
Gilligan gave Mrs. Howell a ring and then last night she judo-flipped her husband! She says she has no memory of this, but she is wearing a ring she claims she borrowed from Gilligan. It's not the strangest thing that's happened on the island of course, but it is pretty peculiar.
May 7, 1967
Mrs. Howell borrowed my ring but gave it back to me yesterday. The Skipper teased me that Mrs. Howell was "breaking off our engagement." I had the Skipper hold the ring because I was working on a raft that the Professor wants me to make to reach shipping lanes. But the Skipper actually destroyed the raft! I don't know what's gotten into him. Maybe he's mad he didn't get any birthday presents.
May 8, 1967
Mrs. Howell isn't the only one going crazy lately. First the Skipper and then Ginger destroyed the raft that the Professor is having Gilligan build. And Mary Ann is upset because Ginger is "wearing Gilligan's ring," although I doubt he's engaged to her any more than he was to Mrs. Howell.
May 9, 1967
Well, this was even stranger than waking up from a drunken stupor, because at least I remember the fermented tea, but I don't recall all of us, even the children, getting gold rings that made us collect coconuts. It had something to do with Boris Balinkoff, who Gilligan recognized and chased into the lagoon with this bamboo car the Professor made for him. I guess, as with the voodoo dolls, we'll never know exactly what happened, but I'm glad it's over, and Balinkoff swam away, hopefully for good.
May 20, 1967
The rings turned out to be some kind of mind-control thing that Dr. Balinkoff was doing, but I got rid of him by chasing him into the lagoon, even if it did make the bamboo car that the Professor made me sort of water-logged. And today I saved everyone from headhunters!
I don't know if these were islanders we met before, but they captured the Howells, Ginger, and Mary Ann. I tricked them into drinking kaptiborra (I think that's how you spell it) berry juice, which wasn't fermented like Lord Beasley's tea but even as juice is pretty powerful. It makes you see double or even quintuple. The headhunters were so confused that they thought I was a bunch of guys and they ran off.
It's nice to not get blamed for ruining rescues and stuff, but I know it won't last.
May 22, 1967
Not only did Boris Balinkoff get into our heads, but headhunters showed up this month! Gilligan managed to scare them off, using a juice that the Professor made that produces delusions. I've heard on the radio that back home "hippies," sort of like beatniks but with longer hair and colorful clothes, are taking illegal drugs. This is obviously a different situation, but in a way I'm glad my girls are spared from bad influences. Marcia will be a teenager in a few years, and I can only imagine what I'll have to protect her from when and if we're rescued. Not that this is an idyllic paradise, but when dangerous people show up, we always manage to defeat them. A cute boy offering Marcia a reefer at a party will be harder to fight against.
June 6, 1967
Oh, wow, when I was fishing today, I caught a U.S. Government briefcase! It says, "Do not open," but of course everyone wants to know what's inside. Little Bobby, who's five, had never heard of spies before but now he wants to hear all about them. I told him what I've seen in movies and Ginger told a story about how she auditioned to be a Bond Girl, which only confused him.
Anyway, everyone's trying to take a peek at the briefcase, but the Professor won't let them. He says we have to keep the briefcase intact until we're rescued. Also, he hopes that the government will try to retrieve it and then we'll all be rescued and maybe rewarded. I can't help being curious though.
June 7, 1967
Gilligan found a military briefcase yesterday, our side, and of course we're all wildly curious about it, although I respect the Professor's reasoning that it's better not to open it, so we can turn it over to the government when they come looking for it. It's certainly a better chance for rescue than the eccentric lepidopterist, although Alice hasn't yet given up on Lord Beasley.
June 8, 1967
I had another of my nutty dreams last night, and it's all the Professor's fault. He got so mad about people trying to take the briefcase that he pounded his fist on the table and the case sprung open. He slammed it back shut, but not before he saw that it had secret military papers inside. I handcuffed myself to the case to protect it, but then Mr. Brady pointed out that it might not just be the U.S. government that comes looking for it. And we already know that Russia knows about this island! I can just imagine my lookalike spy somehow getting the case from me (no one could find the handcuff key) and running off with it.
Obviously, I was real worried, and then I had that dream. Everyone on the island was in it as a spy for the other side (which was an organization called EVIL, not Russia), including the Skipper, who was also my mother! Even the little kids. And Ginger tried to kill me with a poisonous kiss, but I used the poison against her. Well, the Professor was the Chief on my side, but I couldn't trust anyone else.
When I woke up screaming, the suitcase popped open because I was thrashing around so much. It turned out that the handcuff key was inside, along with the secret papers that spilled out, which the Professor says are from World War I! Obviously, no one is going to come looking for them after fifty years, not our side and not, as Mr. Howell put it, "the bloodthirsty Huns."
June 9, 1967
It turned out, after Gilligan had handcuffed himself to the briefcase for a day and night to protect the government secrets, the papers inside were all about "the Great War." So no one's going to rescue us because of them, but at least Gilligan has stopped babbling about his "Russian spy lookalike" again.