I often agonise over what I would do if my granted me three wishes. Or god forbid, one wish.
I suppose it's like the Lotto ad - would you buy and pimp a mansion and Ferrarri, or would you start up a charity?
There are lots of things I want for myself personally. They've changed to a certain extent over the years - I remember being four or so and wishing on the wishbone fora bag of sweets that never emptied - very Enid Blyton. That was a great one as my Aunt Jinny visited and left a bag of Cadbury's (I can't remember what they were - chocolate box sweets, but they came in a bag?) on the table, which seemed pretty magical at the time.
Later my mother brought me and my brother to a child psychologist, I 'm not sure quite why at that particular point, just to make sure she and my father weren't fucking us up to badly, ha ha. He asked me what my three wishes would be and I said I wanted to be able to talk to animals, which he seemed to deem quite healthy, and surmised that my problems were all belonging to my parents, not me. I'd say that's true of most children, tbh. And my own analysis of that wish is that I was a lonely kid who didn't trust or get what she needed from people, and therefore longed to be able to communicate with more loving, kinder creatures.
Now, what would I wish for most? I'd love to have the physical appearance I want - I wouldn't change anything fundamental, no supermodel-transformation, but I'd like to magically become the best I could be - instant weight loss, pertness, shiny, cavity-free teeth, good eyesight, strong fingernails, muscles, shapely ankles, my former blondiness etc.
I'd like to be rid of my self destructive habits. I'd like to win the lottery.
Would I alter the way my wedding went, keep my mother alive and well, re-experience my son's birth so it went the way I wanted it to? I'd like some good luck.
But how could I wish for any of that? When I could wish that we had developed an environmentally friendly industrialisation and technology from the get-go. That people did not have the need to do hurt, so there would be no violence and war, no child abuse, no animal abuse. I could wish for an end to world hunger or poverty or debilitating disease. And come up with a solution to overpopulation too, obviously. I could unwrite history, change racial memory - no genocides, no world war.
I know, I know - if my mother hadn't died when she did, my daughter probably wouldn't have been born, and would be a different person. Any of those historical changes and the world today would be completely different - I might not exist to know about it, and would that be a bad thing? I'm sure there are clauses built into the granting of three wishes - like not being able to ask for three more wishes. A fairy-ombudsman, as Neil Delamere put it. But that's not the point.
What would you wish for? Could your desire for personal gain override your social conscience and empathy?
Check out the fairy godmother art sites if you like it! Not sure what the best way to credit the pics is...
