People always say sociology’s an easy course, but it’s also so unbelievably boring which makes it very much not easy. Anyways, reading the first of the 50 or so pages that’ll be on the exam my mind started to wander and I came up with the following:

Suppose you were newly out of school and were making enough to get by comfortably enough but even so you’re still living paycheck to paycheck. So one day on your way to the dredges, Captain Morgan appears (no idea why – I swear I’m not drunk). Anyways, he makes you an offer, “I’ll give ye the amount of money you would make in a whole year tomorrow (tax-free) to spend as you see fit on the condition that you agree to die a year earlier”. What would you say to that? Would the freedom of that much money in your pocket outweigh the disadvantage?

When I first thought it out I thought most would probably take the captain’s offer, I mean with a whole years paycheck one could travel or start a business or experience a whole new way of life – to truly live, instead of having to wait until you’re old or enfeebled. But here’s the thing, most people just assume they’ll live to a ripe old age. We all have expiration dates, it’s just that very few people can read their own.

But (and I’m complicating it a bit), what if you could read your own expiration date? And what if it said you only had a month and a year to live? That would mean that if you still took the offer, you’d be dead in just a month. However, it’s a month where money would more or less be a non-issue. However, if you declined you’d know that for the next year and a half you’d be living paycheck to paycheck in a crappy job only to die soundlessly in your sleep one fateful April Morning. But you’d certainly be alive longer and who knows what could happen to you in that short time?

Anyways, what would you choose?

Something else.. //