Cerebral Mastication is having an Indiana Jones Blog-a-thon this week. Hmm...I like Indiana Jones, I'm even almost excited about the new movie. Almost. But, what could I write about? I mean, it's kind of pointless (not to mention boring) to review any of the movies. Someone else already covered The Temple of Doom, so, no need to re-tread that path. Then I started thinking...It's something that I've wondered about before, something that has crept into my mind occasionally while trying to figure out what this life is all about. I can't shake it, it's the kind of question that will plague me until my dying day...
What the hell happened to Short Round?
Wikipedia claims that he was born in 1924, making him 12 or 13 when he was kicking around India with Indy in 1935. He would be 17 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Would he have fought in the war? Perhaps, being confused for Japanese, he wound up in an internment camp here in the states. He would have been a high school senior, did he graduate? Did he have a date for the prom?
Short Round would have been 21 when the war ended. Did he go to college? Did he marry his high school sweetheart? Maybe he worked in a chop suey restaurant in Chinatown to support his wife and kids, eventually opening a restaurant of his own. In his free time, he'd take his family to the beach for a weekend. Some might call it living the good life, others The American Dream. All of this could have been Short Round's...
Somehow, I doubt it was though.
More likely, after Indy kicked his young foreign ass to the curb, he went off in search of his own adventures. Taking inspiration from his old friend and Hardy Boys books, he would have gone off solving mysteries of his own, eventually setting up shop in the late 50s as a private detective*.
Nothing says High Quality like something that I photoshopped...That's the kind of life I envision Short Round having. A life of excitement, a life of adventure. Trouble around every corner, a wisecrack every other line and outsmarting everyone in the end. Kind of like an Asian Philip Marlowe. You know what...I'd watch that movie.
Eventually, he'd take on an apprentice or a partner. Going on adventures that same way that Indy took him. And then he'd grow up to hang out with truckers, eventually finding a wife...and then...well...that's a whole different story...
*The kind of detective that they write movies and books about. Not the boring kind.
