My Least Favorite Question

by Crazy Ivan

I spend a lot of time on this blog answering the questions that I hear most often.  I've been answering them so long that I figure I can save myself some trouble just by putting everything down and then referring the people who ask later to the entry on the subject.

Often times this is because the question is more complicated than people who ask it think.  When people ask which is the rarest Myachi, what is the hardest trick or who is the best at the game, they expect quick one or two word answers and instead I give them several parapgraphs.  That makes this blog an ideal spot to tackle these questions.

But this entry is about a whole different type of question; the unanswerable one.

I get this question all the time and it's such a pain to answer so I'm gonna tackle it here and hopefully I won't have to answer it again.  But I'm sure I will.

The question is about trades.  Obviously, a lot of Myachi players are more into collecting than tricking out so they always hit me up with questions about trades.  Specifically, they ask me something like "My friend offered to trade his X and Y for my Z... is that fair?"

Now that's a good question and there's no way to answer this without asking me or one of the Myachi Masters.  Until the sackthology is up and running I welcome these questions and always do what I can to help.

But there's another version of this question that is completely unanswerable and I get it all the time.  It goes like this:

"Ivan, what would you trade for my X?"

Seems like a reasonable question, right?  They want a trade, they have a particular sack so they want to know what I would give up for it.  It might also go the other way:

"Ivan what would you trade your X for?"

In other words, I have a Myachi they really want and they want to get an idea of what I would need to get back in a trade.  Again, it seems like a reasonable question.  But it's not and here's why:

It would be impossible to answer.

Think about it.  What would be my answer?  Somebody asks "What would you trade for my Suffolk Downs?"  Of course, I'd love to get another Suffolk, but how do I answer it? There are any number of sacks or pairs of sacks that I would trade for a Suffolk so it would be impossible to offer an answer that would mean anything to them.

I could start listing them like Bubba from Forest Gump, but that wouldn't help much.  They say "What would you trade for my Suffolk Downs?" and if I wanted to be a jerk about it, I'd say:

"Well, I'd trade Another Brick in the Wall II, an Argyle Black,  a B'Zooka Joe, a Bengal Tiger, a Brant Lake Camp, a Bubbalicious, a Candy Apple Suede, a Candy Corn, a Denim N Dymonds, a Dribbl, an EcoKids Blue, an FAO NYC Cammo, a Gotta Have It, a Kelly and James, a Knicks NBA1, a Nest+M, a Phat Kat Green, a PS158, a Reuben's, a St. Bernards, a Sam Gaillen, a Sammy, a Simply Sports, a Twizzler, a Wedding Dress, a Whackadoodle Blue or a 3.2 Zoot Suit."

Of course, that would just confuse them, there's no way I could remember all that stuff on the spot and, of course, I'm not sure I've got all that stuff to trade.  Those are just all the sacks with a relatively similar Trade Value.  You could also make a fair trade by combining a couple of less valuable sacks and I might consider that.

So in the future, if you ever want to ask someone about a trade, please don't word it in the manner of "What would you trade for a..."

Instead, think about a trade you'd be willing to make.  Ask the person about a specific trade that you'd be willing to make.  If somebody asked me, "Would you trade a Suffolk Downs for my Bengal Tiger?" I could totally offer an answer (an uneqivocal "yes").  If they asked "Would you trade a Suffolk Downs for my Yellow Jacket?" I could answer that as well.  I would say, "No, but if you add something like a 4.0 or 4.1 I would consider it."

Anyway, it's just a pet peeve of mine and I thought I'd share it.  I'll be less gripey on the next post, I promise.