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hobo stew

A mixed bag of hypotheticals, in survey form.

1. You're walking down the hallway and you notice a wallet on the floor. It has your favorite band's logo on it and fifty dollars inside, along with an ID card and a phone number to contact them with. What do you do?
I cannot for the life of me figure out what the band logo has to do with anything. Should I feel more compassion for someone who shares my taste in music? I'd probably call the number up to three times, and if I couldn't get hold of the person by the third try, I'd turn the wallet in and keep the money. Maybe.

2. Your best friend just told you that s/he was raped by whoever. You just so happen to meet the person who raped them while walking with your best friend to the deli. They introduce them self and already begin to start trouble. What do you do?
This question would read better as follows: Your best friend just told you that she was raped. You just so happen to meet the person who raped your best friend while walking with her to the deli. The rapist introduces himself and starts trouble. What do you do? Sometimes grammatical accuracy comes at the expense of political correctness. You have to go with the odds, anyway. More rapists are men.

3. The person you liked for three years has finally found a significant other. You're upset, but still happy for them. However, you found out that this lover of theirs has been cheating on them the entire time. You enjoy seeing the person you like so happy, but it crushes you to know that they're cheating behind his/her back and you think they deserve to know about it. What do you do?
Okay, so...you only use them/theirs when you're talking about an actual plurality of persons. You also avoid dangling modifiers where possible.

4. You really love English class, but you have a terrible teacher who's racist, sexist and a religious extremist. He picks on blacks, girls, and anyone who doesn't believe in his religion. You tried several times to contact the school about it, but nothing happens. What do you do?
Move to a new school district. Most organizations are ridiculously hypersensitive to the complaints of minorities, at least outwardly. If I, as a black female agnostic, can't get results with the principal or superintendent, seriously, screw it.

5. You're home alone when you hear a loud crash, followed by knocking on your door. You open it to discover a celebrity you absolutely hate. They explain that their limo crashed and needed to use a phone. What do you do?
The thought of editing this question's mechanics is exhausting. Also, its premise is ridiculous, because what celebrity doesn't have an entourage and a cell phone? If that happened, though, if Paris Hilton came to my door and needed something from me, I'd make sure we established a definitive compensation agreement and let her in.

6. Your parents don't have enough money to buy you school clothes, so you have to resort to shopping at thrift shops and the like for new clothes since yours are beginning to outgrow you. How do you react to that?
I sell these magical growing clothes to science and use the proceeds to buy some that stay the same size.

7. Your significant other is out of town and you decided to go to a party wtih all of your friends. Unfortunately, you get drunk (like your lover told you NOT to do and you promised not to) and realize you just made out with some random person. What do you do?
It would only be appropriate for a significant other to limit my drinking if I had a drinking problem, in which case telling me not to drink in his absence would be pointless. If I were an alcoholic and a cheater, though, I'm sure I'd be a pretty proficient liar, too, so I guess I would keep the truth to myself.

8. You're failing math and your only hope for passing the class is that you complete the last homework assignment of the marking period. Of course, you didn't do it. Your friend, on the other hand, gets all straight As and does her homework nightly. You share a locker and you notice her math homework at the bottom. You have similar handwriting, so you can pass it off as yours and she can deal with missing the homework assignment. What do you do?
Unless I'm remembering wrong, there's no such thing as a high school student who takes small-scale academic honesty seriously. Unless this particular friend is really uptight about individual homework grades, I'd probably just take it and mention it to her later.

9. You're watching a really good movie in theaters when the person in front of you answers their cellphone and starts chatting rather loudly. Everyone, including you, begins to get really annoyed. The best part of the movie is coming up and no one has said anything yet. What do you do?
Probably get an usher involved. That way, if the asshole didn't shut up, I could at least get my money back.

10. You're at a carnival and you spot one of those games where you have to knock down all the bottles with a hacky-sack and win a prize. You pay, throw the ball and it hits the can but none of them fall down. You're almost 100% sure that they're glued together, and the game was expensive. What do you do?
If I paid more than a dollar for a carnival game, knowing carnival games are pretty much universally known to be rigged, I deserve to be out a dollar.

11. You can't remember the combination to your locker and since it's your own lock, there's nothing they can do. The only option is to snap it. However, you just remembered you left your cellphone and pack of cigarettes in there, which the school does not allow wahtsoever. You know that if they snap the lock, they'll open the locker, too. What do you do?
Let them snap it and pretend to be surprised. I'm a decent actor.

12. Your best friend is being tormented by the school bully.Everyone knows he's really tough, and he'll knock anyone out who messes with him--boy or girl.What do you do?
You know, I may be sheltered, but in twenty-three years I've never seen a real-life school bully. I assume they only exist in literature, on TV and in film.

13. You wanted to dye your hair for such a long time, and you finally have the time/money/whatever to do it. However, your hair stylist just told you that your hair is especially thin and dyeing it can cause it to become extra fried and it may even possibly fall out. What do you do?
I would call this a dumb question, but my roommate bleaches her hair halfway to death, then complains about how thin and sick and fall-outy it is. Apparently, to some, that flawless shade of blond is worth potential baldness.

14. You got drunk (again), went to a tattoo place and got some random guy's name tattooed on your upper arm inside a heart. What do you do with it?
What a retarded question. Obviously you pull an Angelina Jolie, have multi-thousand-dollar laser removal surgery and fill the area with random Third-World coordinates. Again, though, I have a hard time believing this is a plausible scenario, because the pain of a tattooing needle would almost definitely kill the buzz of anyone sober enough to walk around getting tattooed.

15. You got married to the love of your life and now you're ready to have kids. You've been trying for three years and you're finally pregnant. Four months down the line your doctor tells you that if you don't have an abortion, your child could be mentally retarded and have many illnesses that would be life-threatening to the child and a hassle for you and your family. What do you do?
Here I have to be genuine: I have no idea. My instinct is that I could never have an abortion for any reason, but it would be incredibly selfish to sentence myself, my husband and our baby to a life of likely heartache just because I felt too guilty to take the other road. Either way, it would be the hardest decision I ever had to make.

16. You just got your eyebrow pierced (a piercing you always wanted) and it cost a lot of money. However, you forgot you have an important job interview tomorrow and they don't hire people with piercings. What do you do?
The easy answer is that I'd get one of those invisible rings (the ones they make specifically for people in this situation), wear that through the interview and hope it didn't infect the piercing site. But this would never happen, because I would probably spend the day before an "important job interview" preparing for the interview by doing things like buying a nice outfit, getting my hair done, eating well, going to bed early and not getting stupid piercings that I know to be frowned upon in professional environments. Or, removing said piercing would really not be such a tragedy, since, in the words of Carolyn Hax, to call such an accent self-expression, you have to actually be expressing something, and if you can't articulate what that something is, you might be better off putting other considerations (like a new job) ahead of your shiny thing.

17. You wanted to be a lawyer for your entire life, and that's also what your parents had planned out for you. Everything seems to be going smooth until you enter law school and you realize it's not what you want. Instead, you discover a new career that you absolutely love and would like to pursue, but you don't know how to break it to your parents. What do you do?
Going smoothLY. When you modify a verb, you should use an adverb.

18. This is a common one. You have finally found a significant other that makes you happy and who likes you for YOU. After dealing with tons of asshole lovers, you're so happy and ecstatic to have this one. However, your parents don't approve of this person because they don't like his/her parents. How do you break the news to them?
This actually is something I will probably eventually deal with, considering my relationship with my parents. Just the other day, one of them, I won't say which, called me up and said, and I quote, "You know, if you decide you want to date white guys now, that's all right with us. We won't be upset." I think they assume I haven't really done that yet because I know they would take issue with it, which makes sense considering everything else I do to appease them, but I decided long ago that abstaining from any potential partnership doesn't fall into that category. The thing is, though, my parents' values (mostly) ring true for me, and I probably won't seriously fall for anyone whose upbringing really bothers them.

19. Your best friend refuses to talk to you unless you dump your lover, and your lover refuses to stay in the relationship if you keep talking to your best friend. They don't like each other for good, legitimate reasons that happened in the past. What do you do?
If their reasons are "good" and "legitimate" enough for each to demand that I drop the other, then I probably need to rethink both relationships, but if someone is being a whiny baby, I can't accommodate him or her.

20. For the first time ever, your favorite band is playing in your town and you bought tickets and have a plan to go. However, you forgot to finish your homework so you're grounded and forbidden by your parents to go to the concert. This may be the only chance you have to see them, since they rarey tour. What do you do?
Get really, really ahead on future homework, present that fact to my parents as a show of good faith, explain to them that this is probably my last chance to experience something important to me, and hopefully be granted permission to go.

21. You brought your new, expensive iPod to school and someone stole it. You're not supposed to have it there in the first place so you can't tell the office because you'll only get in trouble. What do you do?
Tell the office anyway and make it seem like bringing it onto school grounds was an accident.

22. It's seven o'clock on a Sunday morning and you had a long day on Saturday and desperately need sleep. Unfortunately, you can't sleep because your neighbor is blasting provocative-sounding rap music from his backyard. You don't have his phone number, so you can't call him to tell him to keep it down. What do you do?
Walk next door, fully pajamaed, and ask him to please, please turn his music down. I'm kind of irresistible when I ask for things really nicely.

23. You're making out with your significant other and getting really into it when your mom walks in. What do you do?
This has happened to me more than once. She usually just panics and leaves. I guess she'd behave differently if I were of this survey's apparent target age.

24. You and your friend start a small business. You both work exceptionally hard in making it a success. Two weeks after the sales really start picking up, you notice cash missing from the register. A couple days later, you catch your friend in the act of stealing the money. How do you go about it?
Say, awkwardly, "So...what are you doing?" and wait for the explanation, the excuse or the lie. Unless my friend is a total shit, she would probably confess and offer to drop out of the thing, in which case I would tell her she could stick around and that we would just have to monitor "each other" more closely.

25. Your best friend's brother was in a car accident with his friend, and his friend died but your best friend's brother survived...or so the hospital thought. Turns out they mixed up the two and your friend's brother is actually the dead one. You're the first to know and it's your job to break the news to your firend. What do you do?
How the hell is that my job?

26. You're running late for school and if you're late one more time you get suspended (which your parents will NOT take lightly). While walking to school you notice a crying baby on the side of the road that looks abandoned and there's no houses in sight. You only have two minutes left to get to school. What do you do?
Call the police. Sometimes a "crying baby" is bait for some type of swindle, plus I wouldn't necessarily know what to do if the baby had been kidnapped or malnourished or whatever.

Enough. I just discovered this survey goes on for forty-eight questions. I'm done.