I was working on a wood fence replacing old slats when I punctured the tip of a finger with a rusty nail. One drop of blood came out. I cleaned it and put iodine on it. But it was a rusty so I decided to update my tetanus vaccine. It had been a long time since my last one. In fact, I got it before going on a trip to the Amazon in the late 1980s.Supposedly, the tetanus vaccine is only good for seven years…or is it ten? I’ve heard both.
I told the doctor about when I last got the shot, he looked at me said, “The Amazon? What were you doing there?”
So I told him that Trish and I used to lead adventure tours to South America and we’d made three trips to the Upper Amazon. He thought that was interesting and a few minutes later as I was leaving he turned to the nurse and said: “This guy is Indiana Jones.”
I laughed and said, “Wow! It’s kind of amazing that you said that because I’m an author and I’ve written eight Indiana Jones novels for LucasFilm and Bantam Books.”
The nurse, of course, was really baffled because she hadn’t been in the room when I mentioned going to the Amazon. “How did you know that?” she asked the doc. So I told her about the adventure tours.
So that was a good synchronicity, but it also shows that the name Indiana Jones has become symbolic of adventure. Although Indy never went to the Amazon in any of the four movies, I did send him there in my third Indy novel, Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils where he searched for the legendary city of Z.
I was watching snippets if the new movie The Jungle Cruise over the shoulders of grandkids and nephews and nieces and thinking, “Ok, another riff on Indiana Jones” and of course the bad guys were Germans. How derivative can you get?
I completely agree that Indiana Jones is associated with adventure! As a matter of fact, once, long ago, I was thinking of going on a “quest” to have Indy’s name put into a dictionary, whether it was Merriam-Webster or whatever. I once read a story about a man who travelled the world looking for plants to be used to make medicine. The article referred to him as “the Indiana Jones of botanists.” I’ve seen this phrase used other times. Of course, that involves coming up with a definition. Perhaps this is an adventure I will take up again!
That’s awesome, Rob! Of course, we all know that Indy’s name has been synonymous with adventure since 1981, an association made particularly clear when the tagline for Temple of Doom says: “If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones.” 🙂
On a personal note, Indy’s Amazonian adventure was my introduction to the Bantam novels when I selected Seven Veils to read as my first adult IJ novel back in the early 90’s. That story had everything: adventure, mystery, danger, romance – all the classic elements of an Indiana Jones tale! Of course, I was instantly hooked, and I quickly bought all the other books a few days after finishing Veils!
Thank you for expanding Indy’s world beyond the movie screen by giving fans more adventures to enjoy, and even inspiring some of us to write our own Indy literature!
I love this story. Wonderful synchro. It must have been so gratifying to be called Indiana Jones.
This just happened the other day. Despite the tetanus shot, he came in the door with the synchro.