Would You Rather . . . EP 371

Hi.

I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life.

Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This episode is airing in early ish mid September. We're going to be playing a little.

Game of would you rather meet people who have maybe school age children have probably experienced a version of this, maybe on a Laren car trip. Or you're asking questions of which weird or gross thing your kids would rather experience? Sarah, do your kids play this game?

I think I learned it from my kids. They love the following format of question, would you do this disgusting, horrible thing or be suffering in some way? Or I die, meaning like the kid dies, because I think they like hearing the lengths I would go to to save their life, and so I have to envision myself living out all these nightmares, but my children get to live another day. So that's the variation. We tend to play a little morbid, Yeah, a little bit, a little bit morbid.

When we decided to do this, I started looking through a bunch of the lists of these online like, so, a bunch of online websites have published like a list of one hundred would you rather questions? And I very clearly saw that many of these would you rather questions are perhaps more about the person writing the question, or I guess your perspective, than anything else. So I mean, one that had my kids laughing for a while is

That many kids?

Like that would be crazy? So zero or six? I guess that's the question. There was another one. It says would you rather get a stomach bug in the middle of a date you thought was going well or go on a double date with your parents?

I'm like, are your parents that bad?

Are your parents that bad?

I mean, I guess this was somebody who was writing this had issues with their parents. Apparently that they thought this would that like vomiting in the middle of the date would be equivalent to having dinner with their parents. That's fascinating. I hope their parents did not discover this online article. I'm happy to report with my kids were happy to have dinner with me.

In that situation.

They chose that.

And then another common theme of them is would you rather give a speech in front of X number of people or do why? Terrible thing? And I'm like, come on, people, speaking is not that bad.

It's like you people really hate speaking. Some people feel the same way about speaking that like you or I might feel about like diving off a cliff into shark infested waters. I mean personally, I feel like.

At all, like diving off a cliff into sharping tested waters is like dangerous. Whereas you know, that's speaking in front of a group is just a skill that you get used to over time. So I feel like that's yeah, yeah, public speaking gets a bad rap apparently. So anyway, lots of fascinating questions out there that you can then psychoanalyze. The person who decided to post these questions online, but I guess we're just going to ask each other a series of them and see what we both get.

So, Sarah, you want to start.

Yeah, And just to preface this, so Laura and I decided to make independent choices as to the ones that we would ask the other person. But then I also decreed that we had to answer it ourselves as well. Yes, So I tried to choose things where I was really curious as to what Laura would say, and I'm guessing that she did the same thing. And I have to say when I perused her questions, I was like, Wow,

Well?

Give it that watermelon as probably not my top ten favorite foods. I think I would be fine to have a life without watermelon. I mean, it's good, but I wouldn't want to eat it for every meal, So I think i'd be bidding ad to watermelon.

Oh the fun random fact here.

Normally my husband is the one who cuts up the watermelon in our household, and he sort of cuts the rine completely off, so right then you're like scooping it out of a bowl with a spoon or whatever to put.

On your plate.

And we had a family gathering, extended family gathering at the beach, and someone suggested he cut it with the rhine still on, like so it would be in little wedges that people could pick up.

And I like it so much better that way.

It's just like less messy, Like I feel more like it's a cool snack, like almost a snack on a stick, versus this mushy whatever thing that I have to scoop out. And so, uh, yeah, I guess I've started to see watermelon in a new light. But I still don't want to eat it every meal for the rest of my life, how about you. Yeah, I don't even like watermelon, So I was.

Like, this is one of those ones where I was like, well, the question asker kind of got it wrong, because if the question had said something like would you never want to eat peanut butter again or be forced to eat it with every meal? Then I would actually have to think a little bit but one mile and I was like, yeah, no, bye.

Or maybe I'd be willing to have a small sip of coffee with every meal, right, so I didn't have to give it up completely or something.

I'd definitely choose that, especially if I could have a decap option. That's yeah, fine, I have a tiny bit of decay at dinner or something.

Yeah. Yeah, you're talking about like it's like a shot glass size the coffee. Yeah, I mean I'd probably be willing to have it with every meal.

All right. Well, next one, this is a little bit less of a softball. Huh. Yes, would you rather be in jail for five years or be any coma for a decade?

So we would say, like I have to ask some follow up questions here is what kind of jail are we talking about? Right, Because if we're talking about like one of these hideous dungeons somewhere terrible, like, that's kind of a different matter. If we're talking like a minimum security local Pennsylvania Women's correctional facility, Like I feel that would suck a lot and I'd be sad about it, but you'd get that five years of life, you know, probably.

Read, watch some movies.

My family could come visit me, rather than losing ten years of life completely. So I guess that would be the stipulation here of how I wouldn't make that choice.

Do you think you really get to watch movies in jail?

I believe that's one of like there's a lot of television watching in but I could be wrong. That was just my understanding. Maybe there's different jails have different policies. So yeah, I had thought from some things I had heard and read and some people who have had short stints that there were movies and television involved.

But people can correct me. Yeah, like Martha Stewart's jail experience. Yeah, yeah, I would also pick jail, even with the uncertainty of what type it was. I mean, it sounds absolutely horrifying, but I don't want to lose ten years of my life. That's just like I mean, I guess I could come to regret my choice, but I think i'd regret the choice of coma more not knowing what the jail would have been like and being like, I just erased part of my life. Plus it's five years versus ten years.

Yeah, you know, it sounds like the place where Martha Stuart served her time wasn't terrible, Like she was apparently making like crab apple pies and things like that.

So you'd be like, I'm going to run the first jail time management course for inmates and see where this goes. No, this is like, I mean, we take all this very seriously.

Yeah, this is a I'm sure it's a really traumatic experience for everyone who experiences it.

But anyway, all right, next one.

All right, this one's interesting and I time focused. I picked it for you. Would you rather have a pause or a rewind button in your life?

Hmm?

I think possibly a pause. I think rewind is hard to work with.

I don't know.

So if people have seen the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play, just the idea of messing with anything with time travel. Can you know the butterfly's wing sets off of tsunami somewhere else kind of scenario.

What's done is done.

I think a pause button would allow you to stop and linger longer in a moment that was really cool, just so you could pause and appreciate it a bit.

But yeah, I guess that's what i'd choose.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point, because I was initially thinking rewind, but I do feel like that could be super disastrous and dangerous and maybe it's just like better not to have that ability at all. And pause. I was thinking pause would help you like reassess or maybe like take more time to make a difficult judgment, or like if you were about to have a car accident, you could hit pause and then figure out how to

All right, Well, let's take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with a little bit more of this would You Rather game?

Well, we are back.

We are playing a little podcast version of would you Rather? The game you've probably heard your kids play in the car.

Would you Rather?

Do? Some ridiculous things, some disgusting things, some not fun thing, some scary thing. You can learn a lot about people by asking these questions. All right, Sarah, we're continuing with the ones that you came up with.

All right. By the way, I feel like this would be a good dinner party icebreaker, Like if you have a group of people that don't know each other well and it's a small group. It wouldn't be good for a large group because it would get unwieldy really quickly. But I'm thinking like a six person dinner party, like you could whip out a few of these to get everyone started, And I don't know, I might try it,

I think I'd probably rather be able to take back anything I say. I feel like the hearing the conversation that's about you. Again, if you have any sort of like public presence, there are already conversations going on about you that you don't hear, or you can hear, like through because they're happening in comments, so that people feel like you aren't seeing or something.

I don't know. Book reviews that people leave.

Online where they whatever have their own impressions of your life, or you know, just you're already you've experienced that, and you know that there are conversations. You know, it just doesn't bother you.

I guess as much.

I don't know whereas being able to take back anything I say would be helpful. Although I just said I didn't want to rewind button versus a pause button. So I guess maybe what we need is my sudden burst of self control. So I stop before I say the thing it's the equivalent of the pause button, and then give me like a big flashing red sign would warn Laura, you shouldn't say this, and then I could could stop and rethink and move on, how about you, Sarah? Yeah?

Or maybe it's like not done as a rewind but instead more like all right, I take it back, and people just like at face value are like okay, moving on. That might work. Yeah, I would not want to hear conversations about me. I just I think that would just

So, because I have no desire to not do what I'm doing, like, I don't feel like this is I mean, I been working for a long time. I'm sure if I wanted to stop working for a year, I could stop working for a year. But I don't have any desire to stop working for a year, So in that scenario, just earning double whatever I've been earning would be a nice bonus. So I guess I don't it's yeah, I think you have to be out coming at it this from what are you saying, Sarah?

Like what was I assumed that you would say you'd rather work and earn double because you don't tend to want to stop working, Like, yeah, I think that that you'd be like, fine, I'll work and earn double. Amazing, Like that's great. I guess there should have been a third option, which is like work half the rate and earn like one hundred percent. Maybe that would have been

Yeah. I mean so that's a hard thing to say because I guess the practicalities of you know, once you have a business that's based on you, you can't walk away from it for a year and come right back to it where it is. Like I assume if we stopped doing this podcast, like people would find other things to listen to on Tuesday, and a year from now, we do have to do a ton of work to

Tuesday to make sure. And it's.

Like, I love of writing in and of itself, and so it's kind of just fun to write for an audience.

Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe if you were allowed to work during this paid year, but like completely on your own terms, then that would be like your choice, meaning like yeah, you write when you want to write, you speak when you want to speak, but sort of like, no, I guess you already do that.

I don't know.

This is really hard.

I guess I don't.

Yeah, I don't take on a whole lot of stuff I don't want to do anyway. It just would sort of be like, yeah, don't really feel that excited about it.

I mean, I do, you know have.

I am a worker bee and there are probably times that I stick with stuff projects longer than I should. When I know longer, I'm enjoying them, and so I think there would be a good thing to evaluate with it. But then I'm like, well, yeah, I don't know, so sorry, you'd take it.

I would take it. What if the podcast ended like right now, you're like, actually, I'm done.

That's it. We made it through seven years, Sarah, I'm out in seventeen minutes of an episode.

Yeah, there you go. So I know it's a super thought provoking question and probably like a good self reflection experiment for probably many of our listeners who are doing work that they may really really enjoy, but just thinking about what it means to them, And I'm not sure there's like a answer, like it's not like my answer makes me want to do anything specific, But I don't know.

Just use yuah, So I could totally see that somebody might like the middle of the road option right where you work like half of the year or whatever and not just like twenty hours a week.

Maybe it was that you like would be able to.

Work twenty six weeks of the year and earn the same amount and so have lots of different vacation options or something, you know, and maybe you like magically also have childcare for all the hours, so you could like travel on your own if you wanted to or something.

It's just like, although then I think, like, well, if I had twenty six weeks of vacation, I think I'd get sick of that. Actually I don't know, Maybe I have to rethink. Yeah, I don't know.

All right, Well, I have some questions, so I will go ahead and start asking these questions of Sarah. We'll take an ad break after maybe one or two of these. But okay, Sarah, would you rather be more attractive or more intelligent?

I don't know. This is a hard one. I mean, I get no matter what I say, it's gonna come off like horrible. But I'm like, I think I'm smart enough and being like movie star attractive might be really fun and open some doors. So is it disgusting and superficial to pick that? Yeah, gonna go with looking like Angeline Julie. Yeah, especially if it's like lasting. I mean, if I'm just going to age anyway, I'm not sure that would be worth it.

So well, we're all going to age anyway, but maybe we it'll be a long time we can run with, you know, the good looks for uh. Speaking of Martha Stewart, she's been rocking it at age eighty if anyone looks at her social media stuff. So whatever happened years ago has all natural too well, but good for her for finding the best people in the world to make it happen. So she looks awesome, and so looking like that at

But she was, like bed An attractive.

Early life and she's kept it, and that's pretty awesome. I would definitely go with more attractive. I've well, it's just I mean, yeah, I feel like I don't even use a lot of my brain much of the day. It's not like I'm doing quantum physics or something coming up with new mathematical theorems. That I enjoy thinking hard about stuff when I'm writing, but even that, it's it's

Plus I wonder if people above a certain echelon of intelligence would just struggle in like society a little bit. That could maybe there'd be some negatives. There might be.

There might be unless you're like so socially and emotionally intelligent as well, you've got amazing intuitive abilities.

I don't know, we know superheroes in that way.

All right, Well, we're going to take another quick ad break and we'll be back with more Would you rather? All right, so we are back playing would you rather the game where you propose different scenarios something that might be scary or gross or not fun or just thought provoking. So, Sarah, would you rather have a conversation with your great great grandfather or great great grandmother or your great great grandson

It could happen.

But let's stipulate that it is enough outside that you would not naturally live to see this person.

Yeah, and this is going to be relevant perhaps for the next question as well. But I just find the future way more intriguing than the past. I know that's not necessarily typical for everyone. People get super into these like ancestry things, and I'm kind of like, eh, I don't know, so I've definitely choose great great grandson or

Okay, Yeah, I don't know. I've never been into that ancestry stuff too. My husband and some of my kids really are, and they'll come up with something like, oh, our line is related to Robert the Bruce. It turns

Like why do you care?

But they get really into this, so like where the lineage goes to get you to that or your your relation to Queen Elizabeth. I, I don't know. I am, yes, slightly less excited about the past.

Then it's also funny because people love to be like, I'm related to this noble person and you're like and nine jillion other like of their serfs and normal people. Yeah, yeah, why are we choosing the one special one to focus on? Like every Jewish person is related to Jerry Seinfeld, But you know you're also related to like, I don't know whatever, slaves in Egypt, I don't know whatever.

It's true, it's a long family lineage. It's been a family tradition for a long time. Well, I guess the cool thing about getting to meet a great great grandchild is knowing that you had a great great grandchild. So that's kind of cool. So the earth continued at least to that point, and your family decided it was an exciting enough thing to bring new people into the world that they kept going with it too. So yeah, maybe I would go for the great great granddaughter conversation as well.

Well, this one's you know, actually thinking about it, like it might be dangerous to talk to your future self, because like, what if you find out something bad and then you're disappointed. So I kind of think i'd pick my past self for safety reasons, and maybe I think it well and that could be dangerous too though, because I'm like, well, I would give my twelve year old

Cares about med school?

Exactly?

So it was that a little bit of edge that made it.

But I'm gonna keep it real neutral, yeah, and.

Be like it's gonna be okay, like if you wanted to, it's like, you're gonna have an interesting career, you'll get married, you'll have lovely kids. Just tell her that hopefully she'll be motivated enough by that to continue making good choices. Yeah, I think probably past self as well would could you kind of can already have You could write things now

I have a funny story with that. So I was playing with Google Calendar, and I don't really use Google Calendar except like some my husband invites and I like was like, oh, let me check the tasks function. And I saw that I had put a task in in like twenty sixteen or something that was like maybe it was twenty seventeen. That was like for twenty thirty and it said play Annabell's first day of school video. So I don't know who gave me that idea, but cool idea.

Now, only six years away.

Yeah, I know. I've been looking at old videos and stuff on my phone, old photos and the.

Apple time hop thing.

I mean they show you things that happen on this date or whatever in years past, and it's been fun to see the videos, to hear the kids' voices and even you know, hear my voice talking about stuff, and like, Okay, I guess I'm having.

A bit of a moment with.

Past Laura and maybe I should record more now whatever I'm talking about I record all the time I have passed fretro. Laura wants to listen to past Laura others unless all this stuff gets erased from the digital sphere piece, Laura can listen to past Laura more than she probably ever ever wants to. All Right, Sarah, would you rather swim with sharks or sleep in a house you knew to be haunted?

This one is one of those where I'm like, well, what if one does not believe in haunted houses? Or like, what is haunted mean? So I am definitely not swimming with sharks, so I'm gonna hedge my bets with the ghosts.

Yeah, well, I mean I don't know.

Because my husband and my fourteen year old are both scuba divers, and they point out that seeing sharks on a dive is actually really cool, Like you don't see them that often, and contrary to popular perception, sharks are not like constantly circulating looking for swimmers to bite jaws style. I mean, it happens, but it's not that common. So people actually pay good money to go sleep with, not sleep with sharks, to go swim with sharks.

So I get it. I can't.

I think maybe if I knew it was like I was observing a group of sharks from a distance, I might go do snorkeling scuba diving to go see them. But I don't really believe in ghosts either. So the how otted house like, there's no real such things, So I think probably i'd be okay to sleep in there too.

What if we change it to a house with three pythons on the loose?

Okay, I'm probably taking my bet with the sharks in the like that sense I described with the like observing the school from a distance.

Yeah, I don't like snakes. Yeah I don't either. I guess if I could close my door and I knew they couldn't get under it, it might be okay, I don't know. Okay, we're gonna move on.

Oh that's good little visual image for all our listeners who just thought they were commuting to work today and now you have to live with that one.

Would you rather have a.

Longer Christmas vacation or a longer summer vacation? Like if I were going to add three weeks to your vacation budget here, would you rather take them in the winter or the summer winter?

Because our weather is way better, and there's more skiing opportunities, so we could like enjoy Actually, I would love this. Let's do it. Let's do it like four weeks of winter break and six weeks of summer break, as long as there are some camp options and stuff available for this faux winter break. But like from a Floridian perspective, this would be amazing. Plus it would like better more balanced throughout the year versus having an all in one go.

Yeah, I love summer, I will say. I mean so.

Depending on how we view this question, Like if I don't have to give up weeks of summer right, like I'm not transferring weeks of summer over to Christmas.

Ye, happy to get extra another week at Christmas? I mean, why not?

Then we could like take that trip to New Zealand then or something. It's just always hard to because the kids don't want to be gone on Christmas, and it's a bit of a hassle to move presence or to open them somewhere else. And I mean, how is Santa Claus going to find us if we're in a hotel somewhere? And I sang on Christmas Eve as well, So we always have.

To go like after.

But then it's limited because you're back January first, January second. Being able to take till January eighth would open up a lot of possibilities in terms of traveling farther at times when there are a lot of places that are not that pleasant in the summer. So yeah, I would love to get an extra week at Christmas, but I don't want to give up a week of the summer to get it. So I'm not sure how that all plays out.

But hey, you know, I think college students get like a really long winter.

That is true.

That is true.

I remember we'd be off from like December fifteen to basically February first, because there was like a month yeah exam period, but if you didn't, if you only had papers, there was a lot of it was like.

The old day's work from home flexibility.

I guess, all right, last bonus, Sarah, would you rather meet Harry Potter or Santa Claus?

Well, I did not grow up with the edition of Santa Claus, and I definitely grew up with the udition of Harry Potter. So I will pick Harry. You'll pick Harry, Yeah.

My kids would. My kids would might struggle with this one.

I think they'd like to meet Harry Potter though, because they haven't really met Santa yet. I mean, his helpers have various breakfasts with Santa phenomenon, and he keeps bringing presents, So I guess Harry Potter might be slightly more exciting.

Bonus if it's like, actually Daniel Radcliffe so well, he.

Doesn't look like Harry Potter anymore now he's an adult man. We're doing a lot of time travel though, so could be go meet Daniel Radcliff circle like two thousand and three? Yeah, all right, So moving on, there's been our would you rather questions. This week's question is from a listener who wants to justify outsourcing household cleaning. She says, how do I justify it if my hourly rate is lower than that of what the cleaning service is charging?

She says, for full transparency. I'm looking for permission.

She says.

She recently took a part time administrative role for twenty five hours a week while her kids are little. For various reasons. She's paid well, but not as much as a cost for like having a cleaning service come to her house for let's say two hours. Like what she would earn in two hours is less than what she would pay for two hours of a cleaning service cleaning her house.

So she's saying, can I justify this? So, Sarah, what do you think?

I love your answer, but I just want to add the fact that, like two hours of work from a cleaning service would probably take me like eight hours to do because I am not as efficient and not as good as they are.

And they often bring more people, right, Like if you have a team of three people, like, there's more man hours here, Like the fact that they're there for two hours doesn't mean you're only getting two hours, Like that's like many many more man hours.

Correct, And honestly, even if it was one person, they're probably still one point five to two x speed as efficient as I am. And so I think you have to be careful thinking about hourly rate and thinking about what it's actually saving you. So before you even answer the question, make sure your math is correct thinking about how long it would actually take you to clean. And with that, I let Laura give the rest of the answer because I think it's perfect.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of things like that.

You probably could figure out some of you, Like if you have an older car, you could probably figure out car repair, but it would take you a lot lot longer than it would take to bring it to a mechanic who actually knows what they are doing. And so or painting your walls, Like again, you can paint your own walls, the amount of time it will take you to do a halfway decent job versus a professional painter is probably not a comparable number. So things to keep

Justify it to yourself all you want. Yeah, and just also be careful to see whether there are you know, the fact that you had to ask permission and have all this guilt around it. Do that experiment. We've had you guys do many times before. We've swapped the genders, and we have moms working a very busy job at a law firm, and dad has a more casual job but is doing a lot of the household stuff. Do you judge him the way you're currently judging yourself for

Yeah.

I always point out that one of the most commonly outsourced household tasks is lawnmowing, and that is because it's historically male, and a lot of guys don't want to spend their weekends mowing the lawn and so they don't feel particularly guilty about it being hired out.

And so that's something that a lot of people do.

Now. Obviously, if this household is if money is not in a big supply, though again, if somebody is consciously working fewer hours as a household, you know, it's let's just say that there are ways one can find money

Maybe you take a good.

Look at various recurring bills that you have if there are any of them that could be trimmed to a degree. Just when you're past the point of being on the edge, there's often some discretion somewhere, and if you decide that something is a household priority, you can often find money for it by deciding that something else is less of a priority.

And this person, to be clear, didn't make it sound like there was even like an issue. It was more a she wanted a permission slip. So we are. We are signing on the dotted line.

Signing on the ditted line.

There you go.

Permission granted. All right, love of the week. Well, I'll just go ahead and say I like my cleaning service. It's really nice too. On Thursday morning, the coming you know, the kitchen is clean and it lasts for about ten minutes.

But that's okay. For ten minutes my kitchen is completely clean. Well, I will go with the lawn service. We have both as well. Yeah, there may be some scenarios where actually one half of a couple does want to maybe say they want to do the lawn because then they get like outdoor time to themselves. No, I think we went

All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds we've been playing. Would you rather maybe a game you want to play with your family later today or as you know, a dinner party or something like that. We will be back next speak with more on making work and life fit together.

Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.