A few years ago I felt kinda lame whenever I had to “make a wish” blowing out birthday candles or whatnot and the only thing I could think of under pressure was “world peace”.
Since then, I’ve kept a wish ready to blurt out if I ever see a falling star or toss a coin into a fountain etc
For me, it’s sending my mind, with all my current knowledge and experience, back in time into my body at the moment I graduated high school, so I could re-live my life with more confidence, less anxiety and get straight into doing the cool bits of my life much earlier.
What would be your “back pocket wish”?
Here’s your monkey’s paw.
Time goes on, and you overcome a lot of those anxieties with age. You get married, start a great job, buy a house, have a couple kids, and generally start feeling comfortable with life.
Then in a flash you are back in your high school head, knowing that no matter what you do, you’ll never get the mix of circumstances just right to do it again, which means at best your kids cease to exist and at worst, you lose everything that gave your life meaning. And you can’t share that pain with anyone. And on top of that, you’re now mentally a 45-year-old in a teenagers body, and rather than feeling attraction to your peers, they now look like children to you. You’re full of confidence, but any attempt to use that confidence feels like taking advantage of a child (even though you are physically the same age).
I think of that, because your wish is a horror story for me. Whenever it’s brought up, I think no amount of getting in on the ground floor of k-cups stock or bitcoin, no preventing catastrophes, nothing I could do would make me feel it was worth losing my kids. And worse, making them never exist.
By the way, mine is “I wish for a blowjob.” I’ve got what I need. But I’ll always take a blow job (FROM MY WIFE, TO BE CLEAR).
I used to always want this wish until I adopted a dog under very specific circumstances (We were coming back from the mall and the car in front of us ran over him and kept going, we stopped, grabbed him and took him to the vet). Since then I always think that if I ever get to ask this wish it needs to be back to a moment where I had already rescued him, otherwise those very specific conditions might never happen. So I can completely understand someone with kids thinking the same way, that is a LOT more impossible to match the conditions.
That’s not a monkey’s paw, that’s just… sad.