Sunday Scribblings: Three Wishes

The prompt for the next Sunday Scribblings is three wishes.

---

Three Wishes

I keep three wishes ready,

Least I should chance to meet,

Any day a fairy

Coming down the street.

I’d hate to have tostammer,

Or have to think them out,

For it’s very hard to think things up

When a fairy is about.

And I’d hate to lose my wishes,

For fairies fly away,

And perhaps I’d never have a chance

On any other day.

So I keep three wishes ready,

Lest I should chance to meet,

Any day a fairy

Coming down the street.

(Annette Wynne)

I’m almost thoroughly untrained in the world of wish wishing. I have never encountered a genie in a lamp or a wish-fulfilling fairy. The closest encounter of mine to a wish-fulfilling artifact is a famous fountain in Rome. I lost a couple of coins to that fountain. Are there rules associated with wishes? What about a return policy? From what I have known from fairy tales and legends, magical wish-fulfilling transactions often end in disaster or worse: heartbreak. So pardon me if I’m a little reticent in talking about long held desires bubbling up in the form of wishes.

But I guess the poem has a point. What if I encountered a fairy walking down the street? And for some peculiar reason, this fairy wanted to give me three wishes.

(Hold up. Can someone explain to me how wishes from fairies differ from wishes from genies?) You probably think I’m joking. I am most definitely not. I wanted to know what the rules are. Can you wish for anything your heart so desires? Or are there limitations?

Because this girl assumes the wishing rule of the genies at all times: (1) Genie can’t kill anyone, (2) Genie can’t make people fall in love, (3) Genie can’t bring anyone back from the dead. I would suppose that the additional rule of no wishing for more wishes is part of the stipulations of this transaction.

With all that in consideration, that leaves me with only one wish for myself:

I wish I was living in a cute flat in western Europe.

I’ve been itching to travel and go on adventures. This pandemic has cancelled all plans even remotely close to that. However, all of the stresses and personal turmoils the last couple of weeks have made me crave a bit of a break. A sabbatical of sorts. I’d love to live in a little flat in western Europe. For a little while. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Let me see. I still have two wishes left, you say?

My second wish would be for Covid-19 to disappear.

That’s a pretty obvious wish, don’t you think? The world and my personal world has been affected drastically by this pandemic. It would be lovely to not have to deal with quarantine and transitions and distancing.

My third wish is for peaceful end to inequality.

I feel like we really, truly need it.

Do we actually get to make wishes? Do birthday wishes made before blowing off candles on one’s birthday cake effective? Are wishing wells and wishing fountains truly powerful?

How does it work?

There are more deeply ingrained desires that I don’t ever voice - not in writing, not with a breath. These are ones I think require a magic much stronger than the magic possessed by wish-granting fairies or genies. For now, these desires are better kept close to my heart. I might share them at a different opportunity, when a fairy might pass me on the street.

If you get to make three wishes, what would you wish for?

June 21, 2020