I can't remember what her name was, much about what she looked like, or even what grade I was in at the time, but I will never forget what I learned when this one substitute teacher came to teach my class. She was either unaware of the lesson plan for that day or chose to ignore it. She handed out a sheet of paper to all the students and told us all to make a wish.
Actually, that's not exactly true. We were told to write what we would do if we had a million dollars, which was more or less the same thing. A million bucks was not a finite amount to us kids. Instead, it was some ridiculously large number that we could relate to in just one way. If you had that much money, you were a millionaire. If you were a millionaire. you could buy anything you wanted.
Most of us were middle-class kids. We may not have been rich but none of us had any experience with real hardship either. We were used to coveting small luxuries like some toy or a trip to Disneyland. When we had a chance to wish for something big, we had to wing it. Some wrote that they wanted to live in a huge mansion. For others, it was a stable of horses or a new car. For me, it was a chance to travel around and visit exciting places forever. Of course, we didn't need all that stuff, probably wouldn't know what to do with it, and it was debatable whether it would even make us any happier. Still, I think we did all right in this exercise that allowed us to think big.
The substitute teacher did not agree. After reading our answers. she told us what greedy little monsters we were. None of us gave our money to those less fortunate or did anything with it that made the world a better place. So disappointed was she in us that I began to like I was a rotten person as well. I wanted to change my answer and drop the entire wad of cash on charity. I didn't really care about anyone else, mind you. I just wanted people to like me.
Years later, I wonder what the substitute would think of the kind of person I eventually became, hypothetically of course. There is very little chance that she is still alive when you boil it down to simple arithmetic. She was old then, I am old now, and old plus old equals dead.
I recently gave myself the old wishing exercise just to see how I'd do this time out. There were no million dollars involved though. In the fullness of time, I have gained some grasp on what a million will and will not buy. No, this was an actual wish in the rub-the-lamp, on-a-falling-star magical sense where you could make anything happen.
A good wish would be an end to cancer. Everyone who had it would be cured and no one would ever get it again. That would not only lay to rest any doubts about my character but would be a wonderful thing for humanity. I decided that if I ever got granted a second wish, this one would definitely be shortlisted.
Ultimately, I decided I would wish for every garden gnome on the planet to come to life. Think of how much fun our boring world would be then. Granted, it wouldn't make much difference in gnomeless places like Somalia but in Germany or the Netherlands, people would definitely take notice and I'd be the talk of the town.
The downside of all this is that word would get out that I could have put an end to cancer and didn't. All those people who lost parents, spouses, and bald little leukemia children would be too consumed by grief to remember that this was my wish and not theirs. They'd call be all kinds of names, including "murderer," and ask me how I can look in the mirror or sleep at night. I wouldn't let them get me down though. It's kind of hard to have a low opinion of yourself when there are countless thousands of living breathing garden gnomes who revere you as a god.
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