getting LOST

In mid-2006 when we were living in Ghana, the husband became seriously ill with malaria and/or dysentery. He needed medical attention, so I requested a Peace Corps car to pick us up in our village and bring us to the nearest sub-office in Kumasi. Those four hours was as far as the husband could travel in his condition. Once we arrived, the plan was for him to recover over the weekend and then we’d travel the rest of the way to the capital, Accra, where he would get a full medical work-up at Peace Corps headquarters. The Kumasi sub-office had flush toilets, showers and a real kitchen, and four days there would help him gain back enough strength to endure the 12-hour bus trip to Accra. We laid claim to the 'recovery room' in the bunk area, and settled in for a long weekend.

When you're sick, there's not much market-going, internet-café-ing, or Peace-Corps-ing you can really do. The only viable option to pass the time that weekend was to jump on board with the other volunteers who were around the sub-office. One of them had received a package from home that contained, among other things, the entire first season of the TV show LOST on DVD. While there was no actual TV in the sub-office, it was standard practice to co-opt one of the two computers for DVD watching. An entertainment camp was set up in front of the computer in the resource room, and about a half dozen of us made the commitment to get LOST for the weekend.

I remembered the show arriving on the air back in 2004, when we were still in the process of applying to Peace Corps. Seeing promos for the show on ABC, I would think, "How melodramatic and ridiculous that sounds! An airplane crashes on an island and we have to tune in each week to see what happens to the survivors?" Just the presence of the word 'survivors' in the plot synopsis conjured visions of inane reality-TV shows. The whole 'LOST' gig wasn't going to be for me.

But, less than two years later, there I was, ready to be sucked in to the strange world of LOST. As I settled in to the pilot episode, I admit I was skeptical, but within the first 5 minutes I was deeply invested in the fate of these plane crash victims and the island they were now forced to call home. I had unintentionally suspended all disbelief and dived whole-heartedly into a bizarre and fantastic story.

Though I generally have good stamina for watching long movies, I admit I got fidgety watching ‘Lord of the Rings: Return of the King’ in one sitting at the theater. Not so for LOST. There in the resource room of the Peace Corps sub-office we hit ‘play’ again and again, watched episode after episode, drinking in the mystery and adventure playing out on the computer screen in front of us. We hardly felt the weekend pass, so absorbed were we in the show. Back in off-screen reality, however, spectators eventually have to eat.
Since the husband was in a fragile state of health, it was my job to go into town and rustle up some food for us to eat that weekend. I tore myself away from the encampment in the resource room to take a Tro-Tro (public minivan taxi) with a fellow volunteer into downtown Kumasi. We went to a store where we could buy such exotic delicacies as tuna in a can, real dairy products, imported Asian cookies, and Pringles. Since the husband was still trying to achieve the elusive feat of keeping down his food, I didn't have to buy anything too extravagant. But what's better than chips and soda when you're sick and/or watching a TV marathon?

When I returned with our food supplies, I had missed several episodes in the middle of the season. I jumped back into the fray and finished out watching Season 1 with the group, but having a major hole in the plot line it wasn’t quite as satisfying. No matter how much someone tries to explain the action of LOST to you, you don’t really *get* it unless you watch it for yourself. But alas, our LOST weekend came to an end and we moved on to our medical meetings in Accra. I let go of trying to catch up on those missing Season 1 episodes.

I lost track of LOST after that. Our volunteer friend mentioned once that Season 2 was expected to arrive soon in a package from home, but we never found ourselves in the sub-office with her again at the same time; the conditions never presented themselves for us to participate in a Season 2 marathon. We went about our daily lives and I let the gripping experience of LOST Season 1 sink down into memory. Eventually we ended our Peace Corps service, left Ghana to return to the states, and landed back in Minnesota during prime winter holiday time.
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In January 2007, after our return and after the holiday season wrapped up, the husband and I got our own apartment, borrowed a friend's car, and sent out lots of resumes. We got jobs, started working, and developed daily routines that brought with them a nascent sense of normalcy. Eventually we started watching TV again, and one wintry weeknight evening we stumbled across an episode of LOST on ABC. “Well hello there, old friends!” I thought as we sat down to watch, happy to reconnect with this story that had so unexpectedly grabbed hold of me back in Ghana. But by this time the series was in the second half of Season 3, and with all that had occurred in the season and a half we’d missed, we were utterly lost. We watched a couple of the mid-Season 3 episodes, but we had no idea what was happening. Fond memories of our LOST weekend in the sub-office aside, we weren’t up to the challenge of deciphering the new order of the show. I let it go again.

Fast forward two years to winter 2009, when one Wednesday night I came down to the basement of our house to find the husband glued to the TV. He was watching a LOST re-cap show summarizing the major plot advances and character developments of the previous season - preamble programming to the Season 5 premiere. I hadn’t been planning on getting back into the show, but I sat down to watch an interview with two of the writer/producers, and - BAM! - I was sucked in once more. With only our scant Season 4 recap knowledge as a guide, we watched the Season 5 premiere the following week and away we went! Swept away on the tide of another twisted, mind-boggling season of LOST.

With SO much missing from our grasp of the LOST universe, it was disorienting to take up again with these characters and their plight on Crazy Island, but we watched Season 5 as it aired weekly nonetheless. By the time we reached the season finale in May, we just HAD to know what all had happened between the bookend seasons 1 and 5 we now had under our belts. We did what we had been holding off on doing since we returned from Peace Corps; we joined Netflix.

That was in May, and now it’s August. We’ve been embroiled in an all-out, whole-series, chronological LOST re-watch this entire summer. Every three or four days we get a new disc in the mail from the nice folks at Netflix, and we plan our weeknights and weekends around LOST viewings. While summer in Minnesota is prime time to get outside, this summer, when I’m not at work, I’ve spent most of my evenings in the cool dark of our basement TV room, engrossed in episodes of LOST. Upstairs and outside, crickets are chirping, a warm breeze is blowing, kids are playing, and neighbors are outside chatting. I should be out there with them, enjoying summer’s fleeting freedom, but the mission I’ve chosen to accept – rediscovering LOST – is somehow more urgent than the fast fading of summer.

Thanks to Netflix, I’ve filled in the gap in Season 1 that once nagged at me, and Seasons 2, 3 and 4 have provided a much deeper understanding of the story we witnessed in Season 5. With each episode I watch, I appreciate more and more the dedication, talent and artistry of everyone who contributes to making this monumental feat of entertainment. I can honestly say that I have no shame about my love affair with LOST, and I have no qualms about spending my summer leisure time in front of a glowing box instead of interacting with people or the environment. Some things deserve undivided attention, and in my opinion, this TV show is one of them.
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It’s true that the husband I haven’t been very good with phone communication since we got back from Peace Corps; some of our friends and family have remarked that we seem to never answer the phone. Maybe that’s because we internalized so deeply the daily reality of not having cell phone reception where we lived in Ghana. It still seems like that should be the norm, as if the ability to call people is a special power, to be used sparingly and strategically. So, if we don’t answer our phones when you call us, or if we don’t return your call right away, it could be because of this Spartan communications attitude held over from our time in Ghana. Or it could be that we just can’t hear the phone because we’re in the basement watching LOST.