It’s The Thursday Thumb-Twiddler:
1. An eccentric millionaire offers to donate a very large sum to a charity of your choosing (other than you) if you’ll step, completely naked, out of a car onto a busy city street, walk four blocks through the noontime traffic, and climb back into the car. Knowing that you would be in no physical danger, would you do it?
Assuming “physical danger” includes arrest … yeah, for a frickin’ large donation, sure. I’m conversant enough with dissociation to simply buzz my way through the spectacle.
Hope I’d get a month or two of advance notice, though, so that I could shed a few pounds …
(How much is “frickin’ large”? No clue. Knowing a bit about charitable outreach budgets, I know how much good $100K could do for some of those organizations, even though that feels like it would be cheap to do it for that little.)
2. As a follow-up to the above, how would you rank the follwing in terms of relative unpleasantness — (a) a nude stroll in public, (b) being spat upon by a crowd of people, (c) being arrested for shoplifting at a crowded store, (d) begging for money in a public place.
Unpleasant for me? (d), (c), (a), (b). I’ve dealt with public scorn, and while I’m not exactly proud about my body, I’m not that timid about it. But things that I would feel to be shameful, that would be asking others to judge me and my worth, that would show “how low I’ve sunk” — those would be by far the hardest.
(I don’t think that’s necessarily reflected in my feelings toward folks who are panhandling, just in how I would feel if I had to panhandle.)
3. Enough unpleasantness. If you could travel back in time to meet anyone in your family’s history, who would it be?
Jeez, any number of people. I’ve some family three or four generations back who were founding members of Tucson, and I’d love to learn more about them. My great-grandfather on my dad’s side is a dead end, so far, genealogically, and I’d very much like to learn more about him. And, on the other hand, I’d love to meet my mom’s folks when they were a lot younger. (Heck, I’d love to meet my parents when they were a lot younger.)