Feather for Fingers or Tinfoil Teeth?

So my brother and I are sitting on a bus, on a journey, a long one. To anywhere, it doesn’t matter. It could have been anywhere in the world. The conversation would have been the same, I’m sure, if we were on a coach from Dublin to Athlone or a dolmus from Antalia to Akbuk. I’m on the aisle seat, say, and he’s by the window, looking out at whatever landscape it is we’re passing. I’m watching his blue-grey eyes flash from side to side, following objects rushing past, jerking back to focus on the next, wondering if my eyes are doing the same thing whilst watching his, making tiny flickers, over and over. Maybe we’d be sharing a bag of crisps or dried fruit. Apricots. No. Mango, definitely mango. And I’d say,

“What would you rather,” and he’d look down, the corners of his mouth tweaking outwards, a small smile in anticipation of the game that I’d begun. My Dad would turn and roll his eyes. Not that game again, his eyes would say.

“What would you rather,” another pause, to build suspense. “Drink a whole bottle of oil or a whole bottle of vinegar.”

“Vinegar.” Smiling tentatively, sure of his decision yet awaiting my approval.

“Me too. What wouuuld youuu raaaather….” And that’s how it would begin, that game that we played to pass the time, to make each other laugh, or squirm. The possibilities were infinite. Even a small sub-category (What would you rather eat?) ranged in scale from mundanely off-putting (a jar of horseradish or a jar of mustard, a spoon of Tabasco or of wasabi, a bottle of ketchup or of mayonnaise, raw onion or garlic, custard powder or cornflour) to utterly vile and infantile (poo or wee? Horse testicles or Bull penis?). Better still were the implausible little conundrums we fashioned, often meticulously thought out but more frequently just bizarre, nonsensical scenarios that would never, or could never, take place in the real world. These surreal situations were more difficult; the wacky foodstuffs round was usually just a warm up. What would you rather? What would you raaaaaaather?

“Grass for hair or a carrot for a nose?”

 “X-ray vision or mind reading?”

“Three arms and one leg or three legs and one arm?”

“Blue skin or green skin?”

“Your hands can shoot fire or your hands can shoot water?”
“Vaginaforamouth or mouthforavagina?”

“Cut off your own finger, or someone else’s?”

“Go to school naked for one day or wear school uniform every day for the rest of your life?”

“A plate which refills itself or a bag that never gets full?”

“Have sex with your sibling and no one knows or have sex with your cousin and everyone knows?”

“Wheelchair or Down’s Syndrome?”

“No hair anywhere or loads of hair everywhere?”

“Snakes for arms or trout for feet?”

“Wake up one morning and your whole garden is full of fat people with no arms and no legs, or DIE?’

“Now that’s just ludicrous!” Dad would usually have been listening the whole time, a mask of cynicism veiling, perhaps, quiet amusement.

We’d end up crippled with laughter on an otherwise quiet bus; the illicit laughter of children in assembly and bored businessmen in boring board meetings. Our game would always descend into that same nonsensical depravity; it was a given. By the end, my brother would finish anything with “or DIE”, his voice comically grave. Lick a tramp’s armpit or DIE. Jump off a cliff or DIE. Get stung by a wasp or DIE. Eat an ice cream or DIE. The options were always latent with irony, or invalidity, or incongruity, or inanity. Never, ever, did death seem like the better option. We always chose the former, never the latter. It seemed to be an unspoken rule. You would never choose death in the game.

At the time it was always aimed to make the patience-trying journeys of our adolescence pass less painfully. Now, decades later, I look back - my eyes glazed over, flicking back and forth as though watching scenery fly past dusty bus windows. I wonder why those vacuous pastimes gave us such joy. What strange thrills had we gained from them? I begin to think maybe they were not so pointless, so vapid. I think it’s possible that we learnt from them. We learnt, perhaps, about ourselves. About our characters, our preferences. How to make decisions. Is it right to retrospectively adhere such values to the actions of our youth? My brother, certainly, would have been disgusted at the thought we were playing anything psychoanalytical, or philosophical. Perhaps I’m just playing that adult game we so detested in school literature classes – reading meaning into things which were best left unanalysed, just as they were. A thing unto themselves. Lying here all these years later I realise we never asked anything serious. What would you rather, world peace or an end to poverty. Israel or Palestine. Labour or Lib Dem. Die young or die old. Be an old, sick woman in a hospital bed, dying, or DIE. We never used to choose ‘DIE’. Always the former, never the latter. Option A, not option B. But then again, we never asked those questions.

Lying here now, immobile under plastic tubes and scratchy boiled-white sheets, every breath an exertion, there is no question I can contemplate to which I would not choose the latter.