Genie Questions

I’m tired and not particularly inspired to write today (which I guess occasionally comes with the territory of writing every day), so this is a short one.

When you travel with someone for a long period of time, you constantly find yourselves waiting in a lot of lines, sitting next to each other on a lot of planes, buses, and trains, and walking together through the city.

One way Todd and I pass the time is asking "genie questions". Not a particularly original idea, but good for hours of fun and an occasional insight. Here are some examples, which you can answer in the comments:

1. A genie comes up and offers to pay you to change from a man to a woman or vice versa. No surgery, just instant transformation as if you’d always been that way. What’s the lowest you’d be willing to do it for?
2. The genie tells you that he’s found the exact perfect guy/girl for you. He’ll make the introduction, but only if you agree to never leave the US again. Will you do it?
3. The genie offers you a fixed salary just to live your life… the only catch is that you can’t ever make more money than that. What’s the lowest amount you’ll take?
4. The Genie offers to magically give money to one of your friends, say $10,000. The only problem is that a fraction of the money is going to come from your account and your friend can never know that you were responsible for his good fortune.

The game is only fun if you take time and imagine the situation and try to be as honest as possible.

My answers: 1) $1m. I’m really really glad to be a guy, but most girls seem pretty happy being girls, too. I’d be a lesbian. 2) nope 3) I hate this question. I waffle between picking something like $100k/month and refusing to do it altogether because business is fun. 4) Depends on the friend, but probably around 20% if I thought it would do them a lot of good.