I happened to read this interesting article online, and it occurred to me that I have always hated those "If you had only such-and-such time to live, what would you do?" -type questions. Not only is it the manipulative nature of the question itself (as the article writer pointed out), it's the fact that it is so much an invitation to people to grandstand about how 1) noble they are or 2) how tough they are (hence the article's opener about the kid who got in trouble because he said what he would do is kill a few souls who had it coming). No one ever writes the truth, which is that they would sit around in a pit of black despair and panic, be mean to everyone around them due to above mood, and generally feel sorry for themselves until the old bell tolled. Myself, I've been lucky enough to have either had teachers who were either too conservative or at least savvy to assign so trite an essay subject, or else I was absent on the day that they did. I probably would have written "masturbate" five-hundred times. (No I wouldn't have: I was a goody-goody toady in my school days - I would have probably gone the "noble" route, and scribbled some crap about how I'd spend my last hours getting in touch with my spiritual side and giving away all my possessions to the poor. The poor would have received: one poster of fluffy white kittens; one avocado-green velvet bedspread - it was the only shade of green they dyed cloth in in the seventies; one cheap plastic record player, a number of Elton John, Jethro Tull, and Yes albums; and several boxes of science fiction paperbacks.)

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