The Verdict -- Robert Gardner

My wife’s idea of a perfect day was 18 holes of golf at the local

country club followed by an afternoon of bridge at the same country club.

Then disaster struck. Her husband received an appointment to the position

of chief justice of the High Court of American Samoa.

She sneered at the appointment, saying that the only reason I took it

was that the women were bare breasted. I pointed out that was in Tahiti.

Where we were going, the missionaries had done their work so well that

not only were the women not bare breasted, they covered themselves head

to foot in yards of fabric.

I’m not sure if she believed me, but she took her marriage vows

seriously, so she gritted her teeth, said goodbye to Newport Beach and

all her friends, and off we went to Pago Pago, American Samoa.

As I had promised, the Samoan women were not topless, although a lot

of the men were, going around in their lava lavas. I noticed Katie didn’t

make any complaint about that. She also didn’t complain about the

sacrifice of her golf game because she didn’t have to make one. There was

a country club and lots of golfers just as enthusiastic as she was. There

weren’t as many bridge players, but the Samoans soon recruited her for a

bowling league, so she had plenty of activities.

There were adjustments, though. One of them was the presence in the

house of geckos. For those who have not lived in the tropics, I should

point out that the gecko is a tropical lizard without which life in the

tropics would be unbearable. You see, lizards eat insects, and since

insects breed faster than humans, we need geckos to stay ahead in this

race for survival.

The ones in Samoa were 2 to 3 inches long, and there would always be a

dozen or so in the house, clinging to the walls with their suction toes.

One night, Katie was lying on the couch reading and she said, “Bob,

there’s a gecko looking at me.”

I said, “It’s not looking at you. It’s just sitting there.”

“No,” she said. “It’s looking at me and doing push-ups.”

“That’s a gecko’s way of getting exercise,” I told her.

She said, “But he’s been doing this for an hour. He has to be the

fittest gecko in the world.”

I went over and looked. She was right. There the little rascal was,

doing his push-ups and gazing at her with his goggle eyes. “I think

you’ve made a conquest.”

Sure enough. A few moments later, the gecko let out a plaintive chirp.

Katie chirped back, and soon there was quite a conversation going. Since

I was pretty much a third wheel, I left them alone.

After that, it was a rare night that the gecko didn’t come and

serenade Katie. If another gecko ventured into the vicinity, Romeo would

puff up and make threatening feints until the other moved away. I don’t

know what he did when our tour of duty was up and we came home. I hope he

transferred his affections to a lady gecko. I would hate to think of a

heartbroken gecko making life miserable for the next tenants.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge. His

column runs Tuesdays.