Decisions, decisions

My senior year of high school, I was forced to take an honors physics class because I was a math nerd taking calculus, and it was either honors physics or AP Biology, and I was not going to dissect a cat, as much as I dislike cats generally. Anyway, our teacher was this squat little man who looked like the Amazing Mumford. He was a really smart guy -- one of a handful of our teachers who was a Ph.D. -- but his key downfall that he was completely intimidated by his roomful of 17-year-old girls, and we all knew it.

I felt horrible for this poor guy, who'd totally cave when someone raised her hand the day before -- or even the day of -- a scheduled quiz or test and said, "You know, I just really don't think we feel prepared for this test; I really think we should delay until we all have a better handle on velocity." And he'd be like, "Welll....okay...we'll go over it again, and have the test next week, if that's what everyone wants." It was awful, truly.

And when my group, with wide-eyed, not-quite-but-a-little-bit-feigned innocence, asked why he objected to our science fair poster on Lithotripsy (a technique to break up kidney stones and gallstones and stuff), subtitled, "It'll shock your rocks off." (ultimately amended to "It'll shock your socks off," which was not nearly as fun).

Anyway, during those endless classes where people weren't really struggling to learn, but instead were just feeling very pleased with themselves for manipulating this inexperienced, socially awkward science teacher, a group of girls sat in the back playing "Would you rather...?" There are numerous names for and variations of this game, but basically, you're faced with two horrendous alternatives, and need to pick which, by a hair, you'd rather endure.

For example, the big stumper for me would be, "Would you rather be lying in a ditch covered with mustard, or locked in a room with an endless loop of that Suzanne Vega song "Times Diner" playing?"

In the movie So I Married an Axe Murderer, which I inexplicably love, there's a scene where they're playing "what's worse?" in which one of the participants totally doesn't understand the game, and Harriet says, "What's worse? Going to your favorite restaurant and finding a scabby used band-aid in your meal....OR....?" and the other person says, "Being struck by lightning?" So there's sort of an art to playing the game well.

Anyway, last night during dinner, the Smelmooo and I were talking about people we like, but could never be married to, which led to a discussion of which of our friends we'd most and least want to marry, which led to the development of a new game, similar to Would You Rather...?, which we dubbed, "Kill, Marry, Hang Out With" (because Smelmooo was squicked out by using the usual categories of this game, which apparently are Kill, Marry, F**K, and I was on board with that). I think that Smelmooo ended up winning the game in about round 5, when he presented me with three who are all so lovely that I simply could not pick one of them for the "kill" category.

Do other people do these kinds of things, or are we just sick in the head and I probably should have kept this one to myself?

Probably you're all saying, "Uh, wow, Tangent Woman's nice and all, and fine in small doses, but god bless Smelmooo, because I could never stomach being married to her." So it's a good thing that he and I found each other, and got engaged two years ago today. A heck of a pseudo-anniversary entry, huh?