Spring Break
Choose your own RidicuList adventure
John Bailey
Issue date: 2/20/09 Section: Focus
Remember Choose Your Own Adventure, from when you were seven? Remember how all your friends were jerks, and you just read Choose Your Own Adventure books instead? I do.
I remember turning those pages and thinking, wow, I wish my life worked this way. I wish my friends were that easy to manipulate. I wish my teachers were that stupid. In honor of my youth, wasted away in wishing, I present the Choose Your Own RidicuList.
To enter, go to 1. To read a regular RidicuList, go to 10.
1. Today is a good day
The golden sunlight kisses your eyelids open, and Mr. Magpie taps politely on your window. "Mr. Magpie?" you say, "Wow! It's really you!" It's been a long time since you've seen Mr. Magpie. Days have been dark indeed without your feathered friend.
How's the little dude been? Go to 2, or
Sounds like breakfast. Go to 6.
2. Hello!
You throw open the window, smashing Mr. Magpie square in the face. As he staggers backward, wings windmilling comically, you consider saving his life, but then you realize what a jerk Mr. Magpie's been lately. Life's hard, a------. He tumbles from the sill, landing in the moat of lava you've dug around your house.
Damn right. And you're just getting warmed up. Go to 9, or
You've killed the only friend you ever had. Go to 4.
3. This always happens to me
It was all a dream! You wake up safe and sound in your bed, which is currently in free-fall a mile above the floor of the Grand Canyon.
This looks bad. Go to 9, or
You're hit by a Soviet cruise missile. Full story in News.
4. Oh my God!
Mr. Magpie was carrying a present for you! Scattered among shards of beak, you find a tiny thimble. Mr. Magpie... he loves - he loved - thimbles! He needed them to build a nest for Mrs. Magpie! For him to bring this... here, on this day - after such a long, hard winter - you gasp in realization. His devotion to you was so large, so surpassing, that he valued your friendship more than the lives of his family. You've become a monster, and so must live the monster's existence: a grotesque, snuffling pariah among kings.
I remember turning those pages and thinking, wow, I wish my life worked this way. I wish my friends were that easy to manipulate. I wish my teachers were that stupid. In honor of my youth, wasted away in wishing, I present the Choose Your Own RidicuList.
To enter, go to 1. To read a regular RidicuList, go to 10.
1. Today is a good day
The golden sunlight kisses your eyelids open, and Mr. Magpie taps politely on your window. "Mr. Magpie?" you say, "Wow! It's really you!" It's been a long time since you've seen Mr. Magpie. Days have been dark indeed without your feathered friend.
How's the little dude been? Go to 2, or
Sounds like breakfast. Go to 6.
2. Hello!
You throw open the window, smashing Mr. Magpie square in the face. As he staggers backward, wings windmilling comically, you consider saving his life, but then you realize what a jerk Mr. Magpie's been lately. Life's hard, a------. He tumbles from the sill, landing in the moat of lava you've dug around your house.
Damn right. And you're just getting warmed up. Go to 9, or
You've killed the only friend you ever had. Go to 4.
3. This always happens to me
It was all a dream! You wake up safe and sound in your bed, which is currently in free-fall a mile above the floor of the Grand Canyon.
This looks bad. Go to 9, or
You're hit by a Soviet cruise missile. Full story in News.
4. Oh my God!
Mr. Magpie was carrying a present for you! Scattered among shards of beak, you find a tiny thimble. Mr. Magpie... he loves - he loved - thimbles! He needed them to build a nest for Mrs. Magpie! For him to bring this... here, on this day - after such a long, hard winter - you gasp in realization. His devotion to you was so large, so surpassing, that he valued your friendship more than the lives of his family. You've become a monster, and so must live the monster's existence: a grotesque, snuffling pariah among kings.
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