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“Three wishes?”

I was looking at a little figure from the “Arabian Nights,” maybe three inches tall, perched on the edge of my kitchen table.

I had come home from work really depressed; Kaitlin, the cute account agent in the next cubicle was chatting up Morton, the good-looking, but married jerk across the aisle, and she was totally ignoring me.

I rummaged through my kitchen cabinets looking for a drink to drown my sorrows, and came a cross a bottle of gin. I didn’t remember ever having bought a bottle of gin, but it was the hard stuff that I was in the mood for right now.

In fairness, the bottle wasn’t labeled “gin,” it was labeled “Dgin.” But in my mood, I was eager to overlook inconvenient details. When I opened the bottle, there was a loud “pop,” and the Djinn appeared on my table, silky turban, turned-up-at-the-toes brocade boots, and bloused-out trousers with a tiny scimitar hanging at his ample waist.

“Well, you know the drill,” he had said. “I’ll grant you three wishes, then I need to be on my way.”

“Three wishes?” I asked, still a little behind developments.

“Yeah, you know. Release the genie from the bottle, you get three wishes.”

I was still thinking about what had happened (or more to the point, what was not happening) at work with the beautiful young Miss Kaitlin. “Uh, what I really wanted was just a drink.”

I realized my error immediately. I had just frittered away one of my wishes! The shock of my realization must have been obvious.

“No, no. That wasn’t a wish!” the djinn explained. “I know you were just thinking out loud. We’re professionals … we don’t cheat people out of their wishes. I don’t know where that got started. Tell you what, I’ll throw in a free drink, while we chat about the rules.”

My tumbler slowly filled up with a beautiful golden liquid. “It’s not gin,” the little man said. “It’s a nice California Chardonnay. You’ll thank me in the morning.”

“I’m confused,” I said. “Who are you? What do you mean ‘the rules?’”

“Well, I’m a genie, you know. You let me out of the bottle, so I grant you three wishes. But there are some conditions to the deal. Have a drink, and let me explain. If I start to put conditions on your wishes after you make them, you’ll think I’m just weaseling. That’s probably why genies got such a bad reputation. So now, I just explain the rules up front.”

“First, I wasn’t imprisoned in the bottle. That’s where I live. When we’re done here, I won’t fly away or anything; I’ll just go back into my bottle, and you’ll throw it into the river, or into the trash or something, and one way or another, I’ll be found by the next person, and so on. Okay?”

“Uh, sure, I guess,” I said, sipping at the excellent wine.

“Okay, rule number two. No wishing for more wishes. You can’t believe what ingrates people are. Give ‘em three wishes, the first thing they want is a thousand more. No, no, no. Three wishes, that’s it.”

“Number three, no big, generalized altruistic crap, all right? None of this ‘world peace’ or ‘cure for cancer’ or any of that. What ever you wish for has to be for your personal benefit. It can affect other people, but its main action has to be for you. You can wish for your life to be peaceful, or to cure your cancer … see the difference? And it has to be in the realm of possibility, or everyone else is going to wonder what’s up, you see? For example, say you’re a big football fan. You could wish for the Broncos to win the Super Bowl this year. You don’t really care about the players or the owner, you just want the fun of watching your team win. That’s something that could happen without my intervention, so I could do that. But if you wished for the Cubs to win the World Series, no, that would be impossible.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” I said, as I drank from the constantly-refilling glass.

“Nothing magical or against the laws of physics, either. You can’t have x-ray vision, the power of flight, be invisible, or anything like that. It has to be something a regular person could have or do. Something you’ve always wanted, but could never seem to get.”

I was just about to wish for Kaitlin to fall in love with me when he went on.

“I won’t fool around with other people, either. I won’t kill anyone, make someone love you, cripple an enemy, or anything like that. These wishes are for you, not for anyone else.”

I was beginning to wonder if there was going to be anything left that I might actually want to wish for.

“You want someone dead, I could give you the skill and courage to kill them, but I’d try pretty hard to talk you out of it, see? Djinn’s aren’t omniscient, either. We can’t see through locked doors, into the future, or into other people’s hearts. I can’t tell you what to invest in on Wall Street. I can’t tell you what your boss is going to do tomorrow. I can’t tell you who’s down at the office right now, rifling your desk drawers.”

I looked startled, apparently. “Someone’s rifling through my drawers?”

“An example … that was an example,” the genie said, glaring at me, pacing up and down my place mat. I noticed for the first time he had poured himself a tiny drink, also, and was drinking from it from time to time. “Like I just said, I can’t do that stuff. Jeez, pay attention.” He took a big swallow. So did I.

“And I’m not going to give you anything that I, in my wisdom, believe wouldn’t be in your best interest. And I won’t let you waste your wishes on something that violates the rules. If you wish for something I can do, but that you shouldn’t have, I’ll try to talk you out of it. If you absolutely insist, I’ll do the best I can without harming you.”

I nodded my head, now a little swimmy. He put down his tiny glass of wine.

“Okay,” the little guy concluded, standing there, looking up at me, arms akimbo. “You ready?”

“Yeah, I think so. Thanks, by the way.” I said.

“Hey, no problemo! For one reason or another, you deserve it, or I wouldn’t have come to you. Let ‘er rip.”

“Okay. I’d like to be slender.” I’ve been fighting a weight problem all my life. I knew that was at least one of the reasons Kaitlin wasn’t attracted to me.

“Good one!” said the djinn. “I can see you’ve given this a little thought. You didn’t ask to be ‘skinny.’ You’d be surprised how may people want to lose weight, and ask to be ‘skinny.’ That’s probably our second or third most popular request. No one really looks good ‘skinny.” So, when you say ‘slender,’ that’s good … what weight are you thinking about? You’re what now, 275, 280?”

“285. I’d like to be maybe 180 pounds.”

“I don’t know. For a guy your size, that’s really only ‘ideal’. ‘Slender’ would be 165 or 170. How about we compromise at 175?”

“Yeah, that’d be great!” I said, brightening.

“Here’s the deal. I could do this straightaway, but it would be bad. In the first place, unless you change your lifestyle, you’d probably gain it all right back again. In the second place, if you lost one hundred ten pounds over night, you’d probably die, not to mention you’d attract a lot of unwanted attention.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Well, think about it. Your skin would be all loose and flappy … it’d probably slide right off you! At best, you’d look like an undernourished Shar-Pei puppy. Your hair would all fall out. Your teeth would get loose. None of your clothes would fit. And you’d still have the appetites and exercise habits that got you to 285 in the first place. I can’t grant you a wish that would keep you slender … that’d be like a whole series of wishes, and I already said I wouldn’t do that. I think what you really should ask for is to become slender.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

“Well, in that case, I could change you in such a way that you would want to lose the weight, and would enjoy doing the things necessary to burn off the fat you now have. I would change your preferences and lifestyle such that you would not only lose the weight slowly enough to be healthy, but also keep it off once you got to the weight you want to maintain.” explained the djinni.

“Well, I don’t need to waste a magical wish on that! I could do that myself!” I complained.

“No offense, pal, but look at yourself. If you could do this on your own, would you look like this?” asked the genie, poking me in the belly with his little scimitar.

“Ow!” I said. He had a point. “Well, okay. But, how long is it going to take to get to be slender?”

“Were you ever at your ideal weight?”

“When I got out of basic training in the Army.”

“When was that?” asked the genie.

I thought for a minute. “1982,” I said.

“Okay, then. It took you twenty years to gain the weight, so it should take about twenty years to lose it sensibly,” said the genie.

“No way. I don’t want to be …” math was coming a little slower under the growing influence of the wine, “sixty years old before I get to my ideal weight!”

“Okay, point taken. How about, we give you a real ‘go-getter’ attitude that will make you just love to exercise and eat right? I think you can get to your ideal weight in two years. How’s that sound?”

“Better. It’s a deal.” I said. I put down the glass of wine. It didn’t really appeal to me all that much.

“Second wish?” asked the genie.

“I’d like to be rich,” I quickly answered. While I was talking to the genie, I decided it would be a good time to get in some sit-ups.

“Same deal,” responded the genie, looking at me on the floor, from over the edge of the table. He hopped down and sat on my feet, as if to hold them down while I did my sit-ups. He was surprisingly heavy. “Imagine if you got rich right away. With no particular source for the money, that’s going to raise a lot of eyebrows, don’t you think? Your boss will wonder if you’re stealing from the company, the IRS will express a sudden interest, and you’ll be swamped with new friends and old relatives you never knew you had. Trust me, this is the most common wish we get; I can give it to you, but you won’t like it when you have it.”

“Well, I’d like to have more money,” I said, panting from the sit-ups. “If you can’t grant me on-going wishes, lots of money is the best way I can think of …” gasp, “…to fulfill my own wishes in the future,” I explained.

“Sure, I see the reason you want it, but I just don’t think you should get it all at once. I don’t think you really want to be rich, I think you want to become rich. I can give you the attitudes, talent, and work habits that you need to accumulate a great deal of wealth, but gradually and legitimately, so no one will suspect you of ill-gotten gains.”

“…ninety-nine, one hundred,” I said. I felt compelled to jump up and get started on some jumping jacks before my heart rate declined too far. “Okay, fine. So how long will it be before I’m rich?”

The genie answered cryptically, “Well, that would depend on you. Lots of folks are satisfied with much less that what you already have. Others are never satisfied. It would depend on your definition of ‘rich,’ I guess.”

“I can see that,” I puffed between jacks. “I don’t want money to be my life, but on the other hand, I don’t want to settle too easily, either. I’d like to have enough to be envied, I guess.”

“Well, I can easily make you ambitious and hard-working enough to achieve an enviable life style and nest egg, and alter you such that you really enjoy it in the process. Would that be acceptable?”

“Yeah, that sounds great!” I said. “Could we get finished with this pretty soon? I’d like to get back down to the office.”

“You have one more wish,” the genie noted.

“Come on along,” I asked the genie. I was sweating like a pig. I headed into the bathroom to take a shower, and the genie followed along behind me. “I’d like to be really smart, too.”

“No offense, buddy, but if you were really smart, you’d just realize that you’re also ignorant,” said the genie.

“Oh, thank you!” I said, feeling hurt, but impatient to get back to the Wilson account, as I turned on the shower and the genie climbed up onto the soap dish.

“I don’t think you really want to be smart. What you really want is to become educated,” explained the genie. “Slow and steady, that’s the way! I can you give a thirst for knowledge, and the will to fulfill it. With that, the internet, and a good Junior College, you can have a degree in three years, and round out your cultural awareness to boot!”

“Great, let’s do it!” I said as I toweled off.

The genie smiled. “Done and done.”

The genie suddenly grew in size, but as he grew, he became somehow transparent. Then, like a wisp of smoke, he drifted back to the kitchen, grabbed the bottle cap, and spun down into the bottle of “Dgin,” screwing the cap back into place behind himself.

I shrugged. Too much wine.

I got dressed, and on my way back to the office, I stopped by Sawyer Junior College and registered for Fall semester classes. While I was there, I threw the bottle in the dumpster.

Nothing ever came of my hallucination about the genie.

I eventually got promoted to be Kaitlin’s boss, but she no longer really interested me. I had fallen in love with Karen, a wonderful woman I met playing mixed doubles at Sawyer. We loved our jobs, and we both worked hard after graduation, and made a comfortable life for ourselves. But we never slighted the kids for our careers. We spent a lot of time taking them to see the natural wonders and historic sites, hiking, skiing, laughing.