Choose Your Own Adventure

Do you remember Choose Your Own Adventure books? They were fantastic. They probably still are. What other books at your local library can afford such freedom of choice, subject matter, and destiny? In elementary school, I’d check them out by the armful like some sort of option-wielding bandit. Although aimed at slightly older children, I devoured them voraciously from ages six to nine.

Should I maraud through The Cave of Time? Scour the land in search of The Lost Jewels of Nabooti? Perhaps impersonate a shark in the Choose Your Own Adventure classic, You Are A Shark.  Don’t get me started on War With the Mutant Spider Ants, or The Search for the Mountain Gorillas. If you think I’m making these up, you have sorely underestimated the genius minds of the Choose Your Own Adventurists.

If you are unfamiliar with these novels, let me explain. You are not only the reader but the protagonist, the main character, the hero. You are not an outsider, looking in. You are an insider, acting out. You make the decisions that affect the outcome of the story, nay, the outcome of your very life. For example, in You Are A Shark, you may be faced with this sort of decision.  

You encounter a school of fish. Do you:
    gaily feast on the chum?......turn to page 49.
    favor the pair of human legs dangling in the distance?
    ..................................turn to page 12.

Usually the scenarios are a bit more interesting. The point is, no matter how innocuous the choice, there are no right answers. If you choose to gaily feast on the chum, perhaps it will be a carefree feeding frenzy. If you choose the pair of human legs, you could turn to page 12 to find that those were not human legs, they were HUMAN LEG SHAPED EXPLOSIVE PACKED DETONATORS, and suddenly your adventure is over. Cue shark cartilage confetti.

Because of these sorts of unpredictable developments, reading these books was a stressful and ambidextrous experience for me. I would have no less than five fingers lodged in critical plot junctures, in prime position to rectify any unexpected situation. I remember feeling, at times, that the books were out to get me, and my multi-fingered tactic was the only way to survive.  

“HAH!” I would declare to the inanimate pages. “I have NOT fallen into a Mayan booby trap and died! I’m going enter the cave on the left, instead. Thought you could trap me, did you, page 86?” Then I’d giddily fling my phalanges to the alternate option. If, perchance, the hypothetical cave on the left was undesirable in my eyes, a few finger flips would find me safe and sound, ready to rewrite my fate in The Cave of Time.

Occasionally, even when I had achieved the happiest possible ending, I would hurl myself right back in the fray. Looking for what, who can know? Perhaps I was drunk with freedom of choice, or driven by an insatiable need to explore the unknown. The mind of an eight-year-old is a gloriously complex mechanism.

You can imagine how this sort of behavior impacted my future decision making skills. Before I was ten years of age, I had already lived as a cave explorer, a time traveler, an astronaut, a warrior and a shark, to name a few. I had made and revoked hundreds if not thousands of decisions, rewritten a dozen destinies. How was I to confront reality, whose insistence on linear plot development precluded my cautionary measures?

I’m not sure how I managed, but I gradually grew more confident. I found that though most decisions are irrevocable, their effects are not often irreversible. Few decisions are truly important, and almost no decisions end in being eaten by mutant spider ants.

Though these thoughts at times have brought me clarity, I often find myself in a familiar predicament.

The novel of my life, in my hands.

The options, laid before me.

The outcome? It awaits on page 49. Or perhaps it is hidden on page 12. I long to be that eight-year old girl, fingers fixing five different fortunes; invincible, presciently wise.

Have I learned nothing? Remember, there are no perfect outcomes. You have the right to choose your own adventure; singular. Exactly one. Today is an episode, tomorrow, a plot twist. There is only one adventure. Knowing the ending would spoil the surprise. Pry your fingers from the pages and choose. That is the only truly great adventure.