Wishing for Dummies

How many times has this happened to you? You are out with eight multi-ethnic friends, enjoying a cool beverage with the label facing the camera, and out of nowhere, bubbles methodically weave themselves around you and your rollerblades. You didn’t expect the bubbles. In fact, you specifically ordered butterflies. This is a classic case of a wish gone wrong. Suppose one of those things had popped in your face. You could have tripped and broken your Oscar.

Did you know that wishing for two things at once can result in getting the wrong thing? If you’ve ever heard the joke about the 12 inch pianist, you know how important enunciation is when it comes to longing. Use this guide as a how-to for wishing with accuracy and efficiency. Not only will it give you an edge on the ordinary superstition expert at the historian’s dinner party, but it will also save you time and money you would have foolishly invested in “hopes” and “dreams”. If you’re ready to quit being a helpless moron and start being knee-deep in cash and/or balloons filled with pudding, read on!

Chapter 1: Lung Capacity

If you make a wish on your birthday and blow all of the candles out in one breath, your wish will come true. But the ensuing smoke in your feeble, non-athletic lungs will most likely cause asthma, so the best wish to make is to never need an inhaler.

If you have an eyelash on your face, you have to put it on your finger, make a wish, and blow the eyelash away. If the eyelash is still stuck to your finger, your wish will not come true. It is said that if the eyelash blows away, your wish will be granted. The eyelash almost always blows away, so to keep from becoming skeptical about the process, you should wish for something very far in the future. If it never comes true, you will have forgotten about it, or you will have changed your mind and will want something else entirely.

If you manage to successfully blow a dandelion puff out in one breath, congratulations. You have just contaminated someone’s yard with weeds.

Chapter 2: As Fate Would Have It

If you look at a clock and see that it is 12:34, you should make a wish. This is because the numbers are in numerical order, and that is special; a special time for you to think special thoughts. If it is 12:30, and you patiently wait for 12:34 to appear, you are controlling the wishing climate which is manipulative, and why should you get your wish if you’re a power-monger? You shouldn’t. So you won’t, Saddam.

If you observe that it is 11:11 that is also a good time to make a wish! If you start to notice when it is 12:12, 6:06, or 2:22, you have obsessive-compulsive disorder, and you are not entitled to a wish, because it will most likely not be rational. If you see that it is 10:10, you are looking at a picture of a clock and you are in a store, because advertising executives know that positioning watch hands this way makes them and the surrounding image desirable.

If you wish upon a star, you have to say the “Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight…” poem. The star has to be the first one you see, or you are a liar. It does not matter if it is a stationary or falling star, but you may not wish on Star Jones if she is falling out of her chair or tripping on a red carpet.

Chapter 3: Pop Your Copper

Pennies are the ideal wishing vessel because as an object, they are worthless. It actually costs more than a cent to manufacture a cent, so the only value a penny has is the philosophic kind. In other words, when hopes and dreams are bestowed upon a penny that is the only time it matters. After all, it is only when a child thinks of an imaginary friend that it matters. (The unimportance of that imaginary friend’s imaginary penny is of an indescribable magnitude, and you will stop thinking about it at once). Pennies may be thrown in a well or a fountain, placed in a collection plate or tossed down a giant funnel. Please note that making a wish on a penny that is donated to the Make a Wish Foundation results in a negated wish, and all of your hair will fall out.

Conclusion

These time-honored traditions and scientific phenomena have baffled dogs for years. While potency of your desire affects the outcome somewhat, it is more important to be aware of what does not work. Wishes made on oil lamps, sent to the North Pole or submitted to the creators of Internet Forwards are promptly converted into methane gas and exit through your butthole, which in turn, depletes the ozone layer. On the bright side, they do not fall on deaf ears.

Wishing for more wishes causes the milk in your refrigerator to spoil early and Ryan Seacrest to live another five years inside your television, so proceed with caution.