If you decide to kill the rat, turn to page 49. If you decide to let it live, turn to page 59.

When I was little, I loved reading Choose Your Own Adventure books. I had a complicated way of reading them, though, because I had to read every possible ending. Probably there's some sort of math related calculation a person could do to most efficiently get through every story, but since I hated (and still hate) math, I went the liberal arts route and used paper clips and torn pieces of newspaper to mark the spots where I had "choices," so I could go back in an orderly fashion. Here are some endings I remember: you are eaten alive by red ants; you are raped; you run out of oxygen while scuba diving; you die of a high-pressure related brain problem while scuba diving. Probably these all didn't happen in the same book, although I suppose it is possible. I don't remember any of the happy endings.*

Last night, while lying awake (for hours) in my super-new, hole-less bed,** wondering if I was itching because of bedbugs or because of crappy $3 sheets, I thought about Choose Your Own Adventure and how I sometimes wish that I could live my life as if I was reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Its not that I'm dissatisfied with my life, but it would be really nice to go through all the possible outcomes before deciding which life I wanted. If I knew the outcome of certain decisions I've made, would I make them again? It's dangerous to start doing this, because every decision after becomes null. But then you can turn around and ask which decision is THE decision that made the others necessary or possible?


*I must add here that these scary endings only happened in the longer books. I also read the ones for "younger readers" but thought they were wimpy and stupid. Give me killer ants over happy endings any day!


**Not a good sign, people! Also, they delivered this bed at 10:45 last night. How sketchy is that?