A Horse-Sized Duck

The reflex when presented with a hypothetical question is to dismiss it, as the nature of the question itself is rooted in an un-reality not worth the time to consider. Expending energy on it seems like a waste of time and effort when one could be spending the same energy actually grappling with one of the deeper questions that have real-world, practical consequences, like which commercial brand of Greek yogurt is legit Greek yogurt, or if Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryan will ever bang. These are the kind of weighty issues that affect your spending dollars and television viewing hours, the latter of which used to seem like a massive time-block of passive immobility, but now also includes reading stuff about the television show you're ostensibly watching on your smartphone at the same time your show is airing. A lot is being accomplished while these things are being considered.

No one has less time hypothetical questions than people with real, life-and-death stakes at hand; people whose jobs require a circumspect, sober gravitas lacking the frivolous leeway to even consider something as swattable as a hypothetical question. I'm talking of course about politicians running for office and sports head coaches/managers. Should we have sent elements of the U.S. Sixth Fleet into the Black Sea in response to Russia's invasion of the Ukraine and subsequent interference into internal United States electoral politics? Well, that's interesting, but let's not start speculating about very sensitive issues that could lead to an international incident up to and including a shooting war. Hey, did your team try to tamper with equipment in order to gain a competitive advantage in violation of the stated rules of the sport? Man, those things are really hard to say for sure and it would be irresponsible to comment on things like that, no matter how measurable or provable.

And while hypotheticals sound like a dubious time-suck in the abstract, we all know that indulging in them is the cornerstone of many friendships, especially once you move out of the weather-and-significant-others phase of forced conversation in the early goings. This is the whole entire basis of "fuck/marry/kill." And a great majority of straight male friendships are based exclusively around this line of questioning, usually involving acts of a homoerotic nature, most commonly expressed as a dollar amount required to induce one of your friends to fellate Male Celebrity X.*

You know who do like boring hypotheticals not involving blowing Kevin Bacon? Moralists. These school marms and scolds want to know, oh, if you were presented with something that could benefit you greatly but could be of harm to others, would you still do it? And I'm just like, hello? Is this still American 2017? Found a wallet on the sidewalk stuffed with cash? Boom, finders-keepers. Plus if the wallet's in decent shape, bonus free wallet. And since it's 2017 you don't have to feel guilty about throwing away someone else's pictures of their dumb kids because nobody has kept a picture in their wallet since 2004.

What if someone offered you a million dollars to murder a puppy? Hey, I'd say, where did I last put my puppy-killin' brick? That's the only other question I'd ask. It sounds bad, but a million dollars. That's almost enough to put a down payment on a nondescript tract home in a mostly safe area near a train track in Southern California.

Or hey, what if someone from a foreign government offered you illegally obtained information on your political opponent in the middle of an election in which the winner will be obliged to swear to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?" Turn the information over to the FBI and recuse yourself from the rest of the electoral process? Maybe if you want to guarantee losing like the way losers do. Nope, not me. I love it. Yeah, it seems bad, but think about how mad your dad would be if you didn't love it and then you also didn't win. Do you love losing instead? I mean, you'd be risking being on the receiving end of an irrational tirade not at all dissimilar to the thousands of other ones you'd been subjected to as the result of being born the scion of someone with the emotional intelligence of a starfish and the intellectual capacity of another, less smart starfish. That wouldn't do. You'd rather tear down the republic, right? Maybe that one was too easy...

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*Teenagers: "No amount of money, I would never, you're gay for even asking."

Middle age: I have a list of about 14 dudes who could reasonably expect some action regardless of pay. It gets longer every year. I mean, Jon Hamm? Come on.