Phenomenal cosmic wishing power was all but mine. The question was - what would be the best thing to do with it?
I mean, I could think of hundreds of things I'd love to happen. I could wish my family was rich. I could wish to be done with high school already and on my way to the best college in the country. I could give myself an amazing physique of an Olympic swimmer. Or, I could cave in to the urges most other teenage guys share and wish for a slim, wide-hipped, soft-breasted, cute shortie (just the way I liked them) to be my devoted and sexually adventurous girlfriend.
But there was also something about all of those which made them feel... really basic. And base. Appealing to the simplest desires a man can have. I thought myself more than that. I was a humanist. An intellectual. Yes, I thought that heavy breasts and a wallet full of money were cool. But I also saw that maybe this phenomenal cosmic wishing power could be used wiser? Maybe simply my experience of the last 18 years as a middle-class American boy didn't teach me enough about life to be able to fully appreciate what kind of consequences my potential wishes could have? But there was a way to remedy this. Which brought me to my wish...
"I wish that in five minutes I will make a series of involuntary wishes. I wish that their exact contents will be outside of my control but that they all aimed to achieve one thing - give me a completely new perspective on some aspect of my life. I wish that the wishes included some kind of escape condition instead of being accidentally permanent. I wish that they also included a clause keeping the magic ring away from me and giving it to someone close to me, for the duration of my experience."
That was it. I felt the ring go slightly warm on my finger but only very briefly. I sat down on the bench and looked over the park.
I was strangely calm, even though I was aware than in a few minutes I'd wish for something that would change my life completely. Or at least change it completely for some time. It might have been a huge mistake but I decided to not dwell on that.
I decided to spend the next few minutes in silence. Only people-watching.