I realized that it’s been forever since we’ve done an automotive Would You Rather, so let’s take care of that, right now. Remember, this is the sort of thing your brain needs, right there along with frequent cerebellum massages. So let’s get to it!
Would you rather:
You find a very old bottle of windshield washer fluid in a forgotten corner of your garage. Low on fluid and far too lazy to venture out to buy more, you pry off the surprisingly-difficult cap and open the bottle.
Almost immediately you’re knocked back onto your ass as a vibrant gray-and-taupe burst of light issues forth from the bottle, followed by the image of a cranky, bearded djinn that issues from the bottle in a thick miasma.
The djinn is the Genie of the Forgotten Washer fluid, and in exchange for setting him free, the genie agrees to grant you one wish. Unfortunately, you don’t get to pick the wish, and the genie sort of sucks and is more than a little bit of an asshole, so there’s a catch.
The wish granted to you is the ability to survive any car wreck, no matter how intense or severe. If it’s a wreck and it happens in a car, you’ll walk away. You can drop a Children’s Hospital on a car you’re in, and at the very least you will crawl from the rubble unharmed. The djinn guarantees this, in writing.
The catch? Every time you survive a wreck, you’ll get a new, randomly sized and placed birthmark. Sometimes it may be a tiny freckle in your armpit, other times it may be a dark, vivid splotch on your forehead that resembles a llama masturbating. You just have no idea.
So, you could be set up for a brilliant career in stunt driving or racing without fear, but only if you’re willing to let go of your own vanity. Is it worth it? Maybe?
OR
Okay, that was your first option. Here’s your other option—would you rather:
While digging a hole in your yard for a swimming pool you uncover the forgotten ruins of an old Blockbuster Video store. You enter, and amidst the shelves and shelves of VHS copies of Romancing the Stone and Highlander, you discover a worn but intact cardboard standee of Alf, the furry alien from the 1980s sitcom of the same name.
While dusting off the cardboard cutout of Alf, it begins to glow, shimmer, and then speak. The standee is magical, enchanted by the sheer power of disappointment radiated by all the people who rented Pump Up The Volume.
The Alf standee, thrilled to be discovered, offers you a deal: it will grant you the ability to make drivable any car you can touch, no matter the condition, via the potent power of Alf’s dark magic.
You can drag a 1922 Delahaye out of the bottom of the Siene, and touch the tangled pile of rust and watch it re-form into a like-new car before your eyes. And all you have to do to have this ability is to make sweet, sweet love to the Alf standee, twice a week, for the rest of your life.
If you decide to stop having an emotional, erotic relationship with the standee, every car you’ve magically resurrected will revert to the sorry state it you first discovered it in, so you can’t just bang the Alf once or twice and sell a couple of priceless Rolls-Royces or Bugattis and then quit; this is a lifelong thing. And it’s making love, not emotionless sex.
The potential to amass an unparalleled car collection and wealth here is significant, if you can stand to make love to a cardboard cutout of Alf 104 times a year. What do you say?
Tough decision, right? As always, I look forward to your answers and reasoning in the comments. We learn more about how our audience thinks from these things than all the conversations your Amazon Echos send us every day.