Would You Rather?

Let’s play a game.

Would you rather get certain memories of your choice removed and not keep what you learned from them, or keep on living with them and all the wisdom you’ve (potentially) gained?

Would you rather be buried alive with a working cell phone with 20 percent battery left, knowing approximately, like within, say, 5,000 square feet of where you’ve been buried, so you can telephone potential saviors who also happen to be within a 10-mile radius to guide them to what could eventually become your grave if they’re unable to intervene, or be dropped into the middle of the ocean at midnight knowing that if you tread water or otherwise stay afloat and alive for five hours you will be rescued, if something like an orca whale or great white shark doesn’t happen to eat you?

Would you rather be stone-cold sober forever (aside from meds legitimately prescribed for mental health, not including marijuana), or have water taste exactly like lukewarm, flat, Diet Mountain Dew Baja Blast for the rest of your life?

Would you rather choose one meal to eat at the same time of the same day for the rest of your life, no substitutions or deviations, like, you can’t cook it differently or have fried chicken one night and grilled the next, and you would have to stop and eat in the middle of a funeral if it fell during your 30-minute meal break for the day, unless you decide to go hungry, and keep in mind that if you pick junk food it will affect your health the same way it would anyone else who ate it for every meal, vice-versa for something like salad, which would probably give you a shot at living a very long life eating only one thing the whole time, or have your arch-nemesis get to pick what you’re going to have for dinner two days a week, the only stipulation being that it is technically edible and has been consumed by others without making them ill, for as long as you shall live?

Would you rather make a ton of money (like three times annually what you do now) working for a dick who makes your life miserable on a daily basis, or make even three times more than that amount being a colossal dick to people, in a position of power and responsibility, and being completely self-aware about it, but absolutely unable to control how you behave to your colleagues, though you will still feel remorse about it that you are fully incapable of expressing in any way, shape or form?

Would you rather live in a world where the apocalypse has already occurred and you are one of the survivors for now, though you’re fighting for your life all the time against nefarious forces (other humans, zombies, aliens, et. al.), or a world where you know the exact date the apocalypse is going to take place, and that you will for sure perish on that day, which will come about in about six months from the time the date is disclosed to you, and you are not permitted or able to tell anyone that you know the world is going to end and most if not all of you are going to die in a rather horrific, albeit quick, fashion?

Would you rather hurt the feelings of a stranger who will never, ever forgive you, but may make it their life’s mission to somehow sabotage your success and happiness, not knowing whether they will be at all successful or that you will ever even know they were trying to do such a thing, or hurt the feelings of your own mother in a deeply significant way, knowing she will completely forgive you and never bring it up again after one year, though she will have done so often in that one-year timespan?

Would you rather be hammered drunk all the time, or absolutely stoned out of your gourd all the time, without anyone noticing one way or the other? (It bears keeping in mind that it is not ever safe to drive in either one of these scenarios, but them’s the breaks.)

Would you rather alleviate all your personal anxieties, including ones to come in the future, like, you cannot feel anxiety any longer, forever, or opt to have the same thing happen for five of the people you love or care about most in the world?

Would you rather fight a shark in water or a bear on land, in a 20-square-foot land- or sea-arena, keeping in mind that with either option you get to choose one weapon that cannot be an assault rifle because Christ why are people able to get those things so easily?

Would you rather have to attend a full-length Catholic mass once a day for the rest of your life and be able to consume as a spectator any sport you choose, in person or on TV or on the radio, etc., whenever you like, or never have to step foot in a church again but be not only prohibited, but completely unable to watch sports of any kind ever again? And if sports were on or within sight or earshot, it would look and sound like the music video for Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity?”

Would you rather completely lose your sense of smell forever or have excruciating BO all the time?