If I went to the big Saturday flea market and found the perfect little brass lamp for the hallway table, then a perfect little lamp shade and came home and polished the lamp ... and when it was beautiful, then -- poof! -- a genie with a blue turban and handlebar moustache was bowing before me, then he might say, "Your wish is my command."
"Oh, gee," I'd say, "Any wish?"
"Within reason." he'd say.
"Ten million dollars?"
"Why not a hundred, or five hundred million?"
I'm not a selfish person so I took a moment to think. "What if I ask you to cure cancer?"
He'd shake his head, (I imagine in this fantasy we have going here.) "What kind of cancer? There are many and some have different causes and cures."
"I admit that's a bit big," I'd say. "And I suppose you can't stop global warming."
He'd laughed. And not a pretty laugh either.
I'd pause and remember once I heard someone say, if she had one wish ...so I'd asked what she asked, "Could you turn every gun in the world into a banana and the bombs into bunches of bananas?"
He actually staggered back a couple of steps and just stared at me in utter disbelief.
Finally he said, very softly, "I'm just one genie. Now if you want me to save the mountain gorillas or the whales, I could try. But I don't know how I'd do it. I mean it's a complicated, difficult world out there."
I realized there was not point in asking for a stop to global warming, even if there were an army of genies, it's probably too big a problem
I nodded. Yes, even genies have their limits. 'Okay," I finally said. "Make it five hundred million after taxes."
"After taxes?" he asked weakly. "The genie business isn't what it used to be. But you've got it." With that he disappeared and I plugged in my sweet little lamp. I wouldn't be polishing it again for a long, long time.
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