MANDY FLYNN: You can’t miss what you don’t know

Sometimes, sleep eludes me. When I can’t, my hubby can. And vice versa.

In the wee hours of the other morning, I couldn’t. And there he was. Asleep. So I sneaked my cellphone off the bedside table and started scrolling through randomness. Now, I’m more than a little obsessed.

With the Sentinelese.

If you’ve never heard of the Sentinelese, go now and look them up.

They are people who live on the tiny island of North Sentinel, part of the Andaman group of islands in the Bay of Bengal. They’ve lived there for at least 55,000 years, and no one knows exactly how many of them there are. Somewhere between 50 and 400, it’s been estimated. That’s an interesting estimate. But that’s as good as they can do. No one can get close enough to count.

Because the Sentinelese, they don’t let outsiders in. They reject all types of communication from anyone outside their island. They for centuries have run off or killed anyone who came within spear distance of them. They are hunters and gatherers. They make weapons out of ship parts that drift ashore. They don’t have cable.

Imagine, the Sentinelese have never seen a ShamWow commercial and had to wonder if that thing really holds 12 times its weight in liquid.

They’ve never gotten disgusted to discover Christmas ornaments for sale in a store in the middle of July. Sentinelese parents have never had to take their children’s cellphones away from them at the dinner table. And they don’t have to ask “do these pants make me look fat?” because they don’t wear pants.

And perhaps greatest of all, they have never heard of a Kardashian.

They live in complete seclusion, doing the same things they have done for thousands of years, not because they have to, but because they choose to. People have tried to help them, but they resist. Violently.

They eat coconuts and fish and appear, from the few photos from far away that have been taken, to look healthy and strong. They seem okay. Still, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them a little bit. They are potentially missing so much because they don’t want any contact with the outside world.

“Little House on the Prairie” used to be my favorite show. Okay, so maybe it still is. I used to watch it in prime time and daydream about living on the prairie, wearing a bonnet, and riding on the back of a wagon. I’m just now realizing how sad that sounds.

Anyway, a lengthy discussion in childhood one day revealed that one of my friends could not have lived on the prairie because Laura Ingalls did not have television.

“But you wouldn’t miss television because you wouldn’t even know what a television was because it hadn’t been invented yet,” I tried to explain, to which he said he didn’t care because he would miss Saturday morning cartoons — Grape Ape, Hong Kong Phooey, and all that awesomeness. I got his point. I’d miss Hong Kong Phooey, too. But it didn’t take away the fact you cannot miss what you don’t know.

Just like the Sentilenese and lots of other people living around the world. Just because they don’t have certain things, it doesn’t mean they’re sitting around worrying about how they’re going to get it. They don’t know to even miss it. And it’s kind of great.

What was also kind of great, now that I think about it, is the continuation of that childhood conversation where my friend proceeded to tell me I was stupid. He proclaimed Laura Ingalls could very well have thought about a dog who fights crime with karate and scribbled a picture of him on her slate and wished she could bring him to life.

And a big purple gorilla, too. How did I know she didn’t? Huh? Yeah. See? What did I have to say about that? And then he called me a butt head.

I wonder today what he would think of the Sentilenese. Do they miss Hong Kong Phooey? As far as we know, they have dogs who do karate on their island.

But hopefully, no Kardashians.

Email columnist Mandy Flynn at [email protected].