Choose Your Own Emotionally Harrowing, Late-Early-Adulthood Adventure!
You drink too much on an empty stomach at an after-work cocktails thing, and corner a co-worker. You go on a rant that begins with your thoughts about Sarah Michelle Gellar’s career missteps, but somehow ends up on your troubled relationship with your stepmother.
1. You drink too much on an empty stomach at an after-work cocktails thing, and corner a co-worker. You go on a rant that begins with your thoughts about Sarah Michelle Gellar’s career missteps, but somehow ends up on your troubled relationship with your stepmother. You cry into a cheese platter, briefly, when you think no one is looking. The co-worker puts you into a cab, and you wake up the next morning curled into a ball on the floor of your apartment, five feet away from your bed, with your shirt off but pants still on. The co-worker has left you several texts and voicemails checking to see if you are okay.
- To feel so awkward and ashamed that you quit, turn to page 695.
- To feel so awkward and ashamed that you start subtly campaigning to have your co-worker fired, turn to page 9.
2. You realize that by the time your parents were your age, they were already your parents.
- To brood about how little you’ve accomplished in life, turn to page 127
- To celebrate your baby-free existence by having unsatisfying sex with a guy from the bar who says that he “had the idea for Mumford and Sons, like, ten years ago, but just never got it together to make a band or anything,” turn to page 43.
3. Who are you? What do you even do all day? Why did everyone in your department at work go to Chili’s for lunch without you? They told you they thought you didn’t like casual Tex-Mex dining, but that was an obvious lie, because everyone likes casual Tex-Mex dining! What did you do, what have you done? You often feel like a ghost, haunting the halls of your own life.
- To lie down on the floor of a CVS until someone gives you the attention you so clearly deserve, turn to page 12.
- To fill the shopping cart at JCrew.com with clothes you’ll never buy, again and again, until this whole thing blows over, turn to page 300.
4. Oh, no, that’s not right–I didn’t graduate from high school thirteen years ago. You’re doing the math wrong. You must be…let me…here…but…huh. Oh. No, you’re right, you’re right. Thirteen years ago. Really? Wow.
- To fill your booze-hole with booze, turn to page 80.
- To watch 20 minutes of that one Netflix show about sexy teen werewolf handjobs or whatever, then turn it off, stare off blankly for a few minutes, and then fill your booze-hole with booze, turn to page 255.
5. You are attending the wedding of a friend with whom you share no mutual friends. You have not been able to find a date, so you’re attending alone. Everyone else there knows each other, from college or church or a sex cult or something. God, they all seem to know each other really well. How is that possible, that 150 people could all know each other, personally? Look at them, all ready to warmly embrace each other. Are they all related, is that it? Okay, well, still, then, would it fucking kill one of them to come over and say something to you besides “Ma’am, you’re blocking the ham platter”?
- To spend the entire reception wandering around aimlessly looking for comfort, like a neglected toddler at a Phish concert, turn to page 373.
- To hide in the bathroom texting until a caterer knocks on the door to ask if you are “okay in there,” turn to page 300.
6. Are you entirely positive about the 13 years thing, though? I’m not very good at math. I wasn’t in high school, either. I mean, really, if you think about it, I still have a handle on all the best qualities I had in high school. For instance, I can still fit into these pants!
- To admit that you can’t fit into these pants, turn to page 142.
- To lead a voyage to fight the vicious mole people who live at the center of the earth, in an effort to distract everyone from how you can’t fit into these pants, turn to page 40.
