Previously: Choose Your Own P.G. Wodehouse Adventure.
You are born. If you cry, turn to page 61. If you fall asleep, turn to page 14.
You have made it through your first year of life. If you take a step away from your mother, turn to page 23. If you decide to crawl, turn to page 39.
You have made it to the age of four! If you decide to follow your brothers down to the river, turn to page 8. If you decide to stay at home, turn to page 67.
You have made it to the age of fifteen. Turn to page 11.
It is daytime. Turn to page 19.
You are invited to go on a ship and travel. If you decide to go, turn to page 44. If you decide not to go, turn to page 57.
You have a child of your own. If you are a woman, turn to page 30. If you are a man, turn to page 51.
Page 8: A mild scratch from a thorn bush turns into a raging fever and a pus-ridden infection within 24 hours. You die horribly distended and red from the heat.
Page 11: You have died in childbirth.
Page 14: After you fall asleep, one of your twelve siblings accidentally rolls over on your face, killing you almost instantly. Later that evening, he will develop sepsis from a hangnail and die before dawn. To save time, you will be buried in the same grave.
Page 19: You have died in childbirth.
Page 23: While toddling about the yard, you gnaw on a fistful of dirt and pick up a mild stomach bug. You are dead from dehydration within four days.
Page 30: You have died in childbirth.
Page 39: You live contentedly — albeit malnourished — for another three years before coming down with a sudden and fatal case of the mumps. Your body is thrown in the river, where you will go on to contaminate the drinking water of an entire settlement several miles downstream.
Page 44: A cholera epidemic breaks out. Luckily, you manage to die of the flu before coming down with a case yourself.
Page 51: Your wife has died in childbirth. You marry another woman, who also dies in childbirth. Your third wife survives until you die of virulent smallpox, after which she dies in childbirth.
Page 57: The cholera epidemic reaches you anyway, while you are in the middle of dying in childbirth.
Page 61: The sound of your crying has attracted horrible, slavering predators to your family’s dwelling; you are all eaten alive in one of the most painful deaths imaginable. Your entire gene pool is wiped out.
Page 67: Your brothers drown in the river; you survive for another three months fending for yourself on an extremely reduced diet until you finally succumb to exhaustion and vitamin deficiency.
Tags: choose your own adventure, death, history, if you’ve ever eaten a pretzel and not died in childbirth your life is better than most humans who have ever lived, nasty brutish and short, we are lucky sumbitches
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I hereby renounce my recent complaints that the penicillin I am currently taking to deal with strep throat makes my tummy a little queasy.
Oh Mallory. There’s no way I’d die in childbirth.
I’d eat something I was allergic to and a doctor would bleed me to death in an attempt to get the bad blood out of me.
Allergic solidarity fist bump. I’d probably die from eating something moldy I foraged after my brothers all drowned in the river.
Possibly my throat would close up because of insect/pollen and I’d just suffocate.
Can we make this a thread where we predict how would would have died? Death after contracting tetanus from stubbing my toe that I couldn’t see due to my horrible horrible eyesight.
God, I love pretzels.
I’m always ready to talk pretzel.
Thoughts on the make-your-own-soft-pretzel-at-home kits?
They are a horrible messy sham of a product. Use the time to instead walk to your nearest mall and buy a soft pretzel from the pretzel vendor therein. No clean-up & way better tasting!
The one time I used one it was so messy and so labor intensive, but I also had a small shitty kitchen at the time. I’m planning on giving it another shot soon, and hope I’m not disappointed. But, yeah, the only reason to go to the mall anymore is for a pretzel.
I have never seen kits, but I did once make homemade soft pretzels and they were amazing. But time-consuming. I should make them again…
I think Auntie Anne’s makes one, which didn’t turn out well. I picked up this one http://www.simplyhomemadebread.com/products the other day, have yet to give it a shot.
It probably would be better just to make them from scratch like you did.
This is my go-to pretzel recipe. It is a little messy, but SO much fun to do with a group of two or three other people. Only about an hour start to finish. And it really does taste better than mall pretzels (which I love forever, so it’s a big deal).
There is a pretzel stand at the North Carolina State Fair which creates the perfect pretzel. From them, only once a year, I get one pretzel going in and one pretzel when I leave. Zero shame.
Awesome, thanks!
we make soft pretzels at the bakery I work at and they are perfection when fresh. PERFECTION.
A class on paleopathology made me acutely aware for an entire semester of how goddamned lucky I was not to have succumbed to any of my mild illnesses and to have a ready supply of clean food and water.
That keen awareness dropped away with surprising ease, but every so often it comes rushing back at me all of a sudden. Y’know what amazing thing happened today? Last night, I put a sack of garbage on the curb and today some people in a truck drove up and took it away.
This morning, I turned a handle and clean cold potable water came out. There is A GIANT BOX OF FOOD in my house preserved by cold, and shelves of other food preserved by canning to be shelf-stable. None of this food has visible bugs or stones in it, and I didn’t have to sow or pick any of it. My life is amazing.
When I nick my cuticle, I can put this tiny amount of magical ointment on it and I get to live instead of succumbing to infection and sepsis!
I feel this way about the grocery store. I know more than one person who hates grocery shopping. Me? I’m taking a trip to a STORE FULL OF FOOD. How is this not the most awesome part of anyone’s day?
Agreed!
I feel like this goes very well with your screen name. Also, my favorite thing is that I can pick up a device and people will bring delicious food directly to me!
OMG RIGHT
I bought a jar of blueberry jam yesterday just because I could. I looked upon a whole row of jars and chose the one that most appealed; for a pittance, I could have chosen any of the fine sweet fruits of the fields.
I went home and put my jar of preserved berries and sugar into a cupboard where there were already several bottles and jars of gingers and citrus and berries and spices. I have four different kinds of ginger in my house right now, and more fruits than I can reckon. I live like a queen.
This is making me want to go grocery shopping, simply for the joy of it.
I had strep throat *constantly* as a kid, and thanks to 19th-century books “for kids,” I was amazed that I got to survive it each time. Though I definitely was still somewhat afraid that I’d be forced to burn my stuffed animals one day.
Oh man! One time, when I was 8 or 9, my strep upgraded itself to scarlet fever, and all the discomfort involved was completely offset by the awesome thought that I had a legit Literary Disease and that if this were the past, I would probably be dying.
Paleopathology sounds absolutely fascinating, omg. brb, furiously browsing through Coursera
IT REALLY REALLY WAS
though mostly I remember having the worst sinus infection of my life at the same time I was studying reports of the damage inflicted by illness upon various nuns’ sinus cavities, and feeling a deep and abiding sympathy for them.
To this day, when I get a bad sinus infection, I think of how lucky I am have clean water and clean air and clean linens to rest my weary head on and access to antibiotics if need be, and not to be lying my bones down in a medieval graveyard somewhere.
True fact: my aunt just had a really alarming complication from what started as a sinus infection because the doctor did not give her the right antibiotics. MODERN MEDICINE, everyone embrace it! Including you, doctors!
(She is fine, but coughing so hard you bust an artery is NO JOKE.)
Oh my god, that can happen???
(Whenever I learn about a new horrifying thing, I become immediately convinced it’s going to happen to me. See also: that disease where you stop being able to fall asleep, and then you die from not being able to fall asleep.)
Sincerely, the only archaeology class I ever took that wasn’t an endless source of fascination was one on soil types, though even that had its high points.
YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY.
OMG I MADE THE SAME JOKE WHY WAS I NOT HERE 25 MINUTES EARLIER
FORD THE RIVER OR CAULK THE WAGON AND FLOAT IT?
I don’t know if I ever made it all the way through Oregon Trail without dying…dysentery dysentery dystentery
I think about this kind of thing all the time, especially when I’m sick and taking antibiotics. It’s stunning how little it probably takes to kill a person who doesn’t have access to medicine.
And yet I still snorted at this:
“Page 57: The cholera epidemic reaches you anyway, while you are in the middle of dying in childbirth.”
I know I’ve spoken about this before in the wonderful Gal Science article on antibiotic resistance, but:
I was a full-grown adult before I ever took an antibiotic (bc my parents were really, really weird about doctors, and naturally I am only slightly less weird about them), and I was flat-out stunned at how well and swiftly it worked to make me feel better. It really did seem like magic, and I suddenly understood much more clearly why patients might fail to take the entire course prescribed.
I am a bad pill-taker, a “forgetter,” but I ALWAYS finish my antibiotics. And I agree, it’s sometimes like magic. Sometimes you start feeling better within just a couple of hours, and WOW! Thank you, scientists of the world.
This basically matches my recollection of all the actual Choose Your Own Adventure books I bought at a garage sale. I’d say 75% of the outcomes involved dying in some horribly unsettling way. They were not really for children, maybe?
That’s why you never take your finger out of the page you came from until you’ve made sure it’s okay.
Which always, always, felt like cheating when I did it (but did it anyway). IT’s a book! Read it however you want! Who did this to me, why am I such a goody two shoes.
Oh, man, I was SUCH a chose-your-own-adventure cheater.
You probably reached Planet Ultima when you read Inside UFO 54-40, didn’t you?
There are some perks to being a cheater.
Read them cover-to-cover and then spend every time you remember them trying to jigsaw together a story out of all the pieces, one time never even vaguely resembling another.
The only Choose Your Own Adventure books I actually remember were from R.L. Stine, so it’s not surprising there were lots of awful deaths in there.
Sometimes when I feel really worthless I like to imagine traveling back in time about 400 years and just walking around like ” I KNOW WAY MORE ABOUT SPACE THAN ANY OF YOU! LOOK HOW TALL I AM!”
“My standard of living outstrips that of your richest kings!”
(I guess, anyway. Central heating + antibiotics > servants, I’d say.)
BEHOLD MY CABINET OF SPICES, A CULINARY RICHNESS BEYOND YOUR WILDEST IMAGININGS! MARVEL AT MY SHOES, A MASTERWORK OF COBBLING! MY CLOTHES ARE THE FINEST WEAVE AND STITCHES OF INCOMPARABLE PRECISION! MY HAIR IS LUSTROUS AS A –
what, wait, i am chattel here? SEE YA
I like to imagine how AMAZED a traveller from the past would be about my standard of living.
“Fresh, clean water on DEMAND! and it comes in HOT”
“YOU CAN TAKE A PILL TO STOP IT HURTING”
“Are you a wealthy member of royalty? You ahve so many THINGS AND CLOTHES”
“carss..l.,;aklgsdflkjgnjklrgfdes”
It’s like that part of His Dark Materials where Will is horrified to discover that the amazing healing ointment they have in Cittegazze is a tube of Neosporin that expired several years prior.
“YOUR HOME IS SEALED AGAINST OUTSIDE CONTAGION AND FILLED WITH PLEASANTLY COOL AIR AT ALL TIMES”
Nah, I live in a british 70’s construction that doesn’t have things like air con or filter bricks but DOES have massive windows that turn the living room into an oven. So my windows are always open.
BUT I do have massive windows, I must be astonishingly weatlhy and powerful.
Tonight, I am going to fill A GIANT TUB with steaming hot water, lie back in it, and slather myself with soaps, OF WHICH I HAVE SEVERAL, all scented and packed into fine, sturdy cakes. Should I desire to scrub my weary skin, I have several bathbrushes to choose from, and when I arise, I have a stack of fresh clean towels – cloths just for drying oneself – to wrap myself in, and oils with which to lavish my soft and tender skin.
I recall a passage in C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength [SPOILER, I guess!] in which Merlin is brought to then-modern England. He is filthy, and Merlin is confused and vexed when he’s provided with a bath that offers a huge quantity of hot water and soap and towels, but an inexplicable absence of servants to assist and toady to him while he bathes.
BAM! Time traveler cheat sheet, thanks to the lovely Ryan North!
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/04/15/time-tra…
*go to medieval Europe, draw a map of the world, point to where I’m from, astound them all*
I think about this too.
I… may have started taking Latin in high school because, on the off-chance I unexpectedly arrived in Medieval Europe, that would probably be the most useful language to know. You know, just in case. (I didn’t tell anyone about this.)
I ended up having a lot of fun (the Cambridge Latin books are the best – screw learning how to say “My pants are blue” when you can learn to say “Blood was flowing through the streets” instead) and being pretty good at it, but at this point my grammar has gone to shit and I only remember some nouns and vowels. So the time travel thing had better continue to not happen, since I’m now woefully under-prepared.
Have we all read Maryn McKenna’s piece on a world without antibiotics? Enjoy the nightmares!
What have you done to me
Welp, that’s another thing to add to my list of “how you know when to just give up and die” events!
Bubonic plague still exists, and isn’t THE PLAGUE because of penicillin. Now my nightmares will be full of a future where we all die terribly from the black death.
I’m still convinced that I would die in childbirth NOW if I went through it. Hell, my mom almost did, giving birth to gigantic-headed, nine and a half pound me. My aunt almost did. Twice. All signs point to “IMMA DIE IF I PROCREATE.”
You will get pregnant and die.
NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE. NOPETOPUS SAYS NOPE. [insert gif here]
Now here, take some rubbers.
“Your body is thrown in the river, where you will go on to contaminate the drinking water of an entire settlement several miles downstream.”
When I first read this I felt triumphant and thought, “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds!” It felt like I had at least done something.
I’m going to go judge myself now.
Who among us does not aspire to live fast and leave an obnoxious corpse.
Totally works with Oregon Trail too.
1) You shot 2000 lbs of bison, and only bought bullets instead of clothes. You die of frostbite.
2) You get dysentery and die.
3) Your wagon overturns because of your dumb fucking ox and you break your arm and while you’re writhing in pain a snake bites you and you die.
4) Your family member PenisFace hates the name you gave him and shoots you in your sleep (it does look like a penis though).
5) You played the game seriously and a thief stole everything and you died.
6) You got to a river and didn’t walk downstream to a safer spot and drowned (PRO TIP OREGON IS NOT SEPARATED FROM THE US BY LONG BODIES OF WATER JUST WALK A LITTLE BIT MORE UNTIL THERE IS LAND YOU LAZYASS)
7) You played the game of thrones and you died.
When you play the game of thrones you die or you die in childbirth.
Every damn time with the dysentery. I’ve died from dysentery countless times on the Oregon Trail. Yet Stinky always survives it!
Your dumb husband crosses the Sierras via Donner Pass. You are trapped and starving and die. Then he eats you
I like to think I’d be burned as a witch…but no, I can barely see and am riddled with chronic illnesses, so I would be eaten by a tiger long before I could die in childbirth.
Medicine is RIDICULOUS because how did we only just start to figure out a hundred and fifty years ago that maybe it is a bad idea to shove unwashed hands around in someone’s open wound?
Hey, maybe don’t assist in childbirth right after you just did an autopsy! JUST A THOUGHT.
You have WAY too much blood, so I’m just going to cut open one of your veins with this knife I just used at dinner.
Mallory, you are now listed as the curriculum development committee for our home school.
This is the perfect accompaniment to the Ancient World Series (Greeks, Romans, Chinese) that has been denounced as ‘kind of dull’ by a child who is trying to get out of finishing the 8th grade.
I've made the real deal using lye (food grade ordered off the internet) and they came out awesome. Can't remember the exact recipe, I think I just Googled 'pretzles with lye' or something.
Right as soon as I followed my brothers down to the river I just knew this was going to be one of those everybody dies sorts of things. Did not disappoint, all hail the progress of medical science.
Oh and mine totally would have been “You made it to the age of 17 and graduate school a year early. At your first real job, you are scratched by a cat and die from sepsis two weeks later because the three different antibiotics you need don’t exist yet.”
Now here, take some rubbers.
I… may have started taking Latin in high school because, on the off-chance I unexpectedly arrived in Medieval Europe, that would probably be the most useful language to know. You know, just in case. (I didn't tell anyone about this.)
I ended up having a lot of fun (the Cambridge Latin books are the best – screw learning how to say "My pants are blue" when you can learn to say "Blood was flowing through the streets" instead) and being pretty good at it, but at this point my grammar has gone to shit and I only remember some nouns and vowels. So the time travel thing had better continue to not happen, since I'm now woefully under-prepared.