This is an older Friday Five that I saw and really wanted to do, but never had the time to sit down and give it it's due.
So, as you can imagine, it is quite long. Don't start it unless you've got some time to read.
If you...
1. ...owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?
2. ...owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell?
3. ...wrote a book, what genre would it be?
4. ...ran a school, what would you teach?
5. ...recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it?
1. If I owned a restaurant I would serve really healthy, simple foods. That is a kinda vague definition and very open to interpretation, so I guess I should put in some examples so my thoughts are clearer.
I would not use butter, margarine, vegitable oil, shortening, processed wheats, homogenized fats, etc. The portion sizes would be smaller than at normal restuarants without a cost penalty (or const incentive to get the bigger sizes.) I'd serve lots of tasty, fresh vegitables. I'd make plenty of vegitarian, vegan, and non-vegitarian items so that all people could come and enjoy my food. I'd probably try to keep my kitchen kosher too for pretty much the same reason.
I'd have a special requests jar where people could put in menu item ideas that I'd include on my specials list in later weeks. They could also leave their e-mail, and I would sent out e-mails when I ran their specials. (I'd do this if it were a standard, sit-down restaurant)
If I chose this to be a fast food restaurant I'd make foods using many of the same ideals as mentioned before -- only I'd make it more quickly. I'd use only containers that were recyclable in the area, and I'd encourage everyone to recycle them either at the restaurant or wherever else they'd end up. I'd also try to limit waste from the process of making the food whereever possible, and when there is waste I'd want to take the extra effort to make it productive somehow. (example: giving food waste to agricultural industry professionals who can make use of it.)
I don't really think that this restaurant would be profitable right away or if it was it would likely be pretty expensive. I didn't really burden myself with that when writing this though, because this is all fantastic "if" questioning and answering anyway.
2. If I owned a small store... Man, this is tough. I could see myself selling pretty much anything so long as it doesn't reek or make overly loud noises in-store. I also wouldn't want to sell pornography, alcohol, cigarettes or things such as these that I'd find objectionable.
I think that a Christian Sexuality store would be fun and interesting. It would be part book store for sure, and definately have a lot of merchandise dealing with abstinence for people who are not married. It would have items that you could buy newliweds. In fact, I guess part of the store would also have a strong focus on marriage and the times leading up to that. The store would also have a lot of stuff to make being married more fun though too. After all, if you are abstaining from sex until you get married then you might want to learn all the different ways to enjoy sex once you are married.
3. I think that any book I write would either be Christian Living, Inspirational, darker Fiction, or even Fiction that would serve as a parody or a cautionary tale. I could see myself writing a book in the vein of 1984 or Catch-22.
4. If I ran a school I would teach kids a lot more than what they learn now, and I'd also give kids a lot more freedom to choose what they wanted to learn at a younger age. I think that I'd still make mastery of their own language (English in this case,) Physical Education, History, and Government courses required, but I'd have some things like foreign languages and sciences as optional. I'd also throw in more classes that would teach kids about life. Classes like Nutrition, Home Economics, Personal Finance, Career Management, etc. These all sound like things that you'd likely normally learn from parents, but I think that a lot of kids don't get this stuff from their parents, so it would benefit them greatly to finally get it somewhere.
I am thinking that this is sounding a lot like a High School, so that is the type of school I'd run and there'd be a lot more course options than what I had to choose from.
5. If I recorded an album? I don't think I'd ever do that, but I'd likely have whatever type of instrumental music I put on there flow together nicely. I always thought it would be fun to have different songs/tracks 'fit' together so that you could scarcely tell where one song ended and the next began. Then I'd likely have an hour-long song, but that would be fine with me. That is what I would want, actually, so that would be great with me.
Posted by David at April 14, 2004 05:04 PM