Timeslip: Mary Ann Got Busted

Have you ever noticed that little button on your DVD remote that seems gadgetry’s equivalent to the appendix, that thing called Timeslip button? I have no freaking clue how to work it, but it has a use…I looked it up; Timeslip: The ability to playback and record at the same time.

That’s just great. But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to apply said definition. I thumbed through the manual, I looked on the internet, but each and every bulleted list of instructions was just about as counter-intuitive as…well, a VCR instruction manual.

But, god, the term is so very cool, and when you say the phrase, Timeslip, all kinds of cool science-fictional and fantastically speculative images tumble about in your mind…well, my mind, anyway.

Let’s play with the idea—Are we, as human beings, not subject to Timeslip? Sure. Think about the flesh-and-blood counterparts to the characters that populate our popular culture and personal myth. We all know beings that play back and forth in time through our consciousness…

If the above was just a bit too obtuse, please forgive me; I’m referring to actors. Specifically, those who devoted a greater part of their careers (if not their lives) to playing characters that, intentionally or not, became part of our interior audience, our personal chorus, our popular (if not personal myth).

Take, for example, Mary Ann Summers. As a pre-adolescent young male, I don’t think I even knew if she had a last name until I did a Google search this afternoon. As a matter of fact, I don’t think a great many of us knew she, nor any of the seven fellow-castaways of Gilligan’s Island had last names (or first names in some cases) because those details didn’t matter to us. She was just Mary Ann, when her name was uttered among my chums on the playground, they all knew to whom you referred. She was an icon, a crucial element, and a fixture in the pantheon. What really mattered, initially, was how Mary Ann and her compatriots made us feel—and they usually made us feel pretty good; they tickled our insides, they made us grin, but when the credits rolled at the episode’s close, we didn’t think much more on them until the next day the show aired; Timeslip. That is, until we (well, those like myself in the heterosexually inclined strata of the viewing audience) began to suffer the slow-creeping of hormonal change of preadolescence and Mary Ann’s presence became more persistent. She didn’t go away at the flip of the dial. Desire does not fade like the ancient glow from the cathode ray generator.

We had three potential objects of desire women in the Gilligan’s Island pantheon—well, two, really, as Mrs. Howell couldn’t possibly fit into the equation. Mrs. Howell was about as sexually appealing as Grandma, and sadly, for many of us, she was the equivalent surrogate.

Ginger was just too dangerous. Ginger was best defined by a term I learned a lifetime later, in college; Ginger was Sex on a Stick. Ginger was a train-wreck of glamour and neon-lit eroticism; she was glitter, she was tinsel and gold, and to a small-town boy like me, she was the absolute pinnacle of that which was unattainable. Ginger came with a hefty price tag. Not a price tag in a pejorative sense; I’m not talking hustler-ship or harlotry—I’m simply saying to woo her, wed her, and possibly bed her, you had to have a healthy pocket book to keep in Ginger Grant’s good graces.

Mary Ann’s character was brilliant in design; she was simple and just a little bit insidious. Obviously Mary Ann was constructed to be the Girl Next Door. She’s the gal you’re supposed want. She’s the gal you could bring home to Mom, because if you were to bring home Ginger, you may never be allowed through that door again. No, with Mary Ann you were given a rare combination of sincerity, simplicity, a touch of serenity and maybe, just maybe, a pinch of something spicy—something sexy, though you’d never actually call it that. And that was okay—for some reason it was okay to harbor these feelings for Mary Ann. Maybe it was the ponytails, maybe it was the plaid, the calico, the bobby socks, the maryjanes…because Mary Ann was an erotic safe-zone. You didn’t have to feel guilty for feeling something naughty about Mary Ann, and for that reason your gradual march into sexual awareness was softer, gentler, and when you thrummed with that first vibration of soft erotic tickle for Mary Ann it was something you were supposed to do. You wanted her, yet you felt a certain chaste protectiveness of her. In your mind’s eye, you never saw her in lascivious poses and you’d probably whither up and die to see her in a two-piece. No, Mary Ann, as a presence, was something to be protected, protected in the same safe place you kept those very early feelings, when the rough mechanics of sex began to take over and propel you toward adulthood.

And on October 18th, 2007, Dawn Wells was busted out in the toolies of Idaho for reckless driving and possession of drug paraphernalia.

“Mary Ann: Busted!” the headlines ran.

That really rattled me.

But the image attached to the police blotter brought home to us by CNN, MSN, and E! was not the winsome object of novice-love, but someone bearing closer resemblance to a certain melon-mugged and wizened Jedi master. And this, this moment, this is where we must step back from the flow of the Timeslip and shake ourselves a bit. Dawn Wells, actor, aged 69, founder of the Idaho Film and Television Institute and organizer of the region's annual family movie festival (known to all as the Spud Fest) was sentenced to five days in jail, fined $410.50 and placed on probation after pleading guilty to one count of reckless driving, was the one got busted—not Mary Ann Summers.

Mary Ann lives on a perfectly pleasant desert island, somewhere in the Pacific, with all those loveable characters. And she’ll exist, in the Timeslip, where we view, playback, and record her over and over again.

Dawn Wells will go on with her life, and hopefully not get busted for reckless driving, or drug paraphernalia because, you know, that’s not the best example to be setting for the youth of America.