The Christmas Genie

by Dan Gutman

  “I bet I could handle it,” said Andrew.

  “I heard about some guy in Texas who won a thirty-million-dollar lottery,” said Ethan. “Billie Bob something or other. It ruined his life. Two years later, he killed himself.”

  “Wow!” everybody said.

  “It’s out of the question,” Mrs. Walters said as she pulled out the next wish. “Sorry, Alyssa. No lotteries.”

  WISH #11:

  I WISH I COULD PLAY SHORTSTOP FOR THE YANKEES.

  Nobody was surprised when Jacob jumped up and started high-fiving and fist-bumping everybody. We all knew his wish would have something to do with sports. That’s all he lives for.

  “The Yankees stink,” I told Jacob. “You should play for the Cubs. The Cubs rule.”

  “The Cubs stink,” Jacob replied. “They haven’t won a World Series in a hundred years!”

  “Boys!” said Mrs. Walters.

  “If I got my wish, I would get to play baseball all the time,” Jacob said. “I would be famous. People would cheer for me and I’d earn millions of dollars. Kids would be asking me for autographs. It would be a great life.”

  “That would be cool,” David said.

  “No offense, kid, but you’re ten years old,” Genie Bob told Jacob. “If you played for the Yankees, the Yankees would beterrible. Especially with you at short. They put the best glove man at short.”

  Glove man? I couldn’t believe that a genie who had been traveling around in space for thousands of years would know how to talk baseball.

  “What I meant to say was that I wish I was good enough to play for the Yankees,” Jacob said.

  “Well, that’s a different wish,” said Genie Bob. “Ya gotta be real specific when you’re making a potentially life-changing wish like this.”

  “Is there any downside to Jacob’s wish?” asked Mrs. Walters.

  I looked behind at Mia. She was sure to find a cloud behind every silver lining. But for once, she kept her mouth shut.

  “Yeah,” said William. “The rest of us get nothing.”

  “You’d get to watch me play,” Jacob said.

  “On my awesome big-screen TV,” David added.

  “Gee, thanks,” William muttered.

  “Are you aware that the average baseball player’s career lasts only five to seven years?” Ava asked. “I looked it up. With football players, it’s even shorter. Like two to four years.”

  I didn’t doubt her, because Ava knows all kinds of useless information like that. She probably memorized the whole Internet.

  “Five years on the Yankees would be awesome,” Jacob said.

  “It’s better to be famous for five years than not to be famous at all,” said Andrew.

  “What would you do with yourself for the rest of your life?” Mia asked Jacob. “You’d be a has-been. Washed up at fifteen.”

  “I’d go to card shows and sign pictures of myself,” Jacob said. “That’s what all the old-timers do. They make a lot of money.”

  “I would think it would be tough to go back to being a normal kid after you’ve been really famous,” said Madison. “Like all those child stars on TV. They usually get messed up with drinking or drugs or they go crazy.”

  “You know, some ballplayers have careers that last a long time,” Jacob told us. “Babe Ruth played for twenty-two years.”

  “And some have careers that last one year,” Ava said. “Five years was an average.”

  “My coach told me about this guy named Rufus Meadows,” Jacob told us. “He was on the Cincinnati Reds in 1926. Meadows pitched to one batter in one game. That was it. His whole career.”

  “Being a pro athlete isn’t all that great, you know,” Mia said. “They travel all the time, so they have to be away from their family a lot. They get injured, too.”

  “What if you played for the Yankees, but you weren’t that good?” asked Alyssa.

  “Oh, I’d be good,” Jacob said. “I’d be awesome.”

  “What if you were really good, but you made one really bad play?” I asked Jacob. “Like that guy Bill Buckner. He was a really good player, but he let a ground ball go between his legs and cost the Red Sox the World Series.”

  I saw a video about that. It happened back in the 1980s, but when you say the name Bill Buckner, the only thing anybody remembers about him was that he booted a ground ball.

  “That wouldn’t happen to me,” Jacob said.

  “I’ll bet Buckner didn’t think it would happen to him, either,” I told him.

  “I’ll wish for it not to happen to me,” Jacob said.

  “One wish per customer,” said Genie Bob. “No exceptions. No freebies.”

  “Okay, okay!” Jacob said. “I hear everything all of you are saying. I get it. There would be a downside to playing in the big leagues. Stuff could go wrong. I could get injured. But I would still do it. Playing shortstop for the Yankees has been my fantasy ever since I was little.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” said Genie Bob. “Ya gotta follow your dreams, kid.”

  “Of course, it wouldn’t do the rest of us any good,” said Ashley.

  “True,” said Mrs. Walters. “Let’s move on, shall we? We’re not even halfway through our wishes.”

  WISH #12:

  I WISH CARS RAN ON WATER.

  Huh?

  Everybody turned around to see who dreamed up that crazy idea.

  “Why would you want to drive a car on water?” asked William.

  “We already have cars that run on water,” Alex said. “They’re called boats.”

  “No!” Elizabeth said. “What I meant was that I wish we had cars that could use water for fuel. As a power source. Instead of gasoline, you know?”

  “Oh, that’s different,” Alex said.

  “Think of it,” said Elizabeth. “If cars ran on water, we wouldn’t have to import oil from the Mideast. We wouldn’t have to be nice to all those oil-producing countries that hate us. We wouldn’t have to fight wars over oil or worry about what happens when the oil is all gone. There would be no pollution or global warming, because we wouldn’t have to burn oil and give off greenhouse gasses. We wouldn’t have to drill in areas that threaten wildlife. There would be no oil spills. It would save the planet.”

  “You wouldn’t have to go to the gas station to fill up your tank, either,” said Sophia. “You could just attach a hose from the outside of your house and run it straight into your car’s gas tank. I mean, water tank.”

  “That would be cool,” said David.

  “You wouldn’t have to worry about running out of gas, either,” said Josh. “You can always get some water.”

  “People wouldn’t have to pay so much money to fill up,” Ella said.

  “Hey, if you were really thirsty, you could just siphon some water out of your tank and drink it,” said Alex. “We wouldn’t have to carry around water bottles.”

  Everybody was getting really excited about the idea of having cars that run on water.

  “It’s a very interesting wish, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Waters said. “I think we should consider this one seriously.”

  “Can I say something?” asked Christopher.

  Christopher doesn’t talk a whole lot, so everybody turned around to see what he had to say.

  “My uncle owns a garage,” he said, “and I know a lot about cars. The car moves because a little bit of gas ignites and the explosion pushes the piston in the engine. You can’t ignite water. Water can’t make a car go.”

  “It’s a wish, Christopher!” Elizabeth said. “If you’re wishing, anything is possible. Right, Genie Bob?”

  “Right-ee-oh.”

  “Wait a minute. Has anybody considered the fact that water is scarce?” Hannah asked. “We have water shortages all the time. Half the people in the world don’t have enough water to drink.”

  “Oh, here we go again,” Logan moaned. “Get out the violins.”

  “How can we even think about cars that run on water when there are people dying b
ecause they don’t have clean drinking water?” asked Hannah.

  “Hannah is right,” said Elizabeth. “Cancel my wish. It’s Christmastime, remember? We should wish for clean drinking water for everyone in the world. That would be a worthwhile wish for the holidays.”

  “Why is it that you two always worry about poor people and starving people instead of yourselves?” Logan asked. “Why don’t you look out for yourselves for once?”

  “Because Elizabeth and I are not selfish people, that’s why,” said Hannah. “Why is it that you always look out for yourself and never for the rest of the world?”

  “I’m looking out for the rest of the world,” Logan said. “This is how I see it. If I look out for my own interests, then I’m gonna be successful and happy. And if everyone looked out for their own interests, then everyone would be successful and happy. If somebody isn’t successful, that just means they weren’t looking out for their own interests.”

  A few kids were nodding their heads.

  “That just sounds like an excuse for being selfish,” Elizabeth said.

  “Hey, it’s human nature to protect yourself,” Logan said. “Do you think when a lion is in the jungle, it worries about some endangered species before it kills its dinner? No, it only cares about itself.”

  “I hate to break the news to you, but lions aren’t human,” Hannah told Logan. “So maybe you can come up with a better example of human nature.”

  “You know what I mean,” said Logan. “It’s human nature to protect yourself. That’s a fact.”

  “Well, I think it’s human nature to protect the human race and the planet we live on too,” said Elizabeth. “And if we don’t conserve our water supplies, there will be no human race.”

  “You know, it’s not fair to say everybody would be successful and happy if they simply looked after their own interests,” Hannah said. “What about people who have a disease, or they’re handicapped, or they got into an accident?

  What about people who live in a city that got flooded by a tsunami? What do you say to them? Tough? Too bad? Better luck next time?”

  “If a tsunami flooded somebody’s city,” said Alex, “I’d say they could use a car that ran on water.”

  “This discussion, just like a car that runs on water, is getting us nowhere,” said Mrs. Walters. “Perhaps we should move on to the next wish.”

  “We’ve only got about twenty minutes left,” I told everybody. “If we don’t hurry up we’re going to miss Christmas vacation!”

  WISH #13:

  I WISH IT WAS CHRISTMAS ALL YEAR LONG, AND EVERY DAY WAS MY BIRTHDAY.

  “That one is mine,” said Ashley. “Everybody would be happy all the time, because everybody’s happy at Christmas and birthday time. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

  “Not only that,” Abigail said, “but we would get presents all year long! We’d have a Christmas tree up in my house every day of the year.”

  “No, the best part would be that we would have snow all year round,” said Jacob. “I could go snowboarding in July!”

  “That would be cool,” said David.

  “But if it was Christmas all year long, Christmas would lose its meaning,” Mia said. “It wouldn’t be special. Holidays are so nice because they only come around once a year.”

  “Do you have to look at the bad side of everything?” Logan asked.

  “Every positive thing has a negative side,” said Mia. “It would be better to think about the negative side now than after we make the wish, right?”

  I had to admit she made sense.

  “It just occurred to me,” Elizabeth said, “if we had snow all year round, we’d have to worry about global cooling instead of global warming. It could lead to another ice age.”

  “Oh, brother!” said Logan.

  “Okay, forget about Christmas,” Ashley said. “What about having your birthday every day?”

  “That would be cool,” said David.

  “I know you’re just going to call me a party pooper,” Mia said, “but if every day was your birthday, you would probably be dead within three months.”

  “Party pooper!” shouted Logan.

  “How do you figure that, Mia?” Ashley asked.

  “Well, if you had a birthday every day, in one month you’d be thirty years old,” Mia explained. “In two months, you’d be sixty. In three months, you’d be ninety. And you’re ten years old now, so that’s a hundred. You’d grow old really fast. Chances are, you’d be dead three months from now.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” Ashley said. “I just figured I’d get presents every day, people would bake me cakes all the time, and everybody would always be nice to me.”

  “Oh, they’ll be real nice to you,” said Logan, “especially when you’re an old, senile, wrinkled ten-year-old.”

  “It was a dumb idea,” Ashley said. “Tear that one up, Mrs. Walters.”

  WISH #14:

  I WISH I HAD A DOG.

  Everybody turned and looked at Isabella. We all knew that had to be her wish, because she loves animals. She always says she wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up.

  “Don’t you already have, like, a dozen pets at home?” asked Madison.

  “I have two cats, a bunny, a parakeet, a hermit crab, two turtles, and some fish,” Isabella said. “But I don’t have a dog.”

  “So go to an animal shelter or a pet shop and get a dog,” said Ethan. “Problem solved. What’s the big deal?”

  “I’m allergic to dogs,” Isabella said.

  Oh.

  “Ah, it’s the same old story,” said Genie Bob. “Humans always want what they can’t have. If you were allergic to elephants, you’d want an elephant.”

  “I would not,” Isabella said.

  “Where would you keep an elephant, anyway?” asked Alex. “I guess you could wish for an elephant house in your backyard. But on second thought, you only get one wish. So if Isabella wished for an elephant house, she wouldn’t get the elephant. And what would you do with the elephant house if you didn’t have an elephant to put in it?”

  “I don’t want an elephant!” Isabella yelled. “I want a dog.”

  “I believe there are some breeds of dogs that people aren’t allergic to,” said Mrs. Walters. “You might want to look into that, Isabella.”

  “Instead of wishing for a dog, why don’t you just wish there were no such things as dog allergies?” Ella asked Isabella. “Then you wouldn’t be allergic to dogs and you could just get any dog you want.”

  “Good idea, Ella,” said Mrs. Walters.

  “Look, anybody can get a dog,” said Alex. “But nobody can get a talking dog. Let’s wish for that. If my dog, Bella, could talk, I could have a regular conversation with her.”

  “Talking animals are cool,” said David.

  “I think part of the reason why animals are lovable is because they can’t talk,” said Olivia.

  “Parrots are lovable, and they talk,” said Ella.

  “If animals could talk,” Mia said, “some of them would be annoying. Just like some people are annoying when they talk. I don’t think I need to name any names.”

  “You know what?” Logan said. “You’re annoying. Why don’t you shut up?”

  “Would you like to go the the principal’s office, Logan?” asked Mrs. Walters.

  “No.”

  “What if your dog could talk and it told you that it hated you?” asked Ashley. “That would be a royal bummer.”

  “I wish I had a flying dog,” Alex said. “A flying dog that talked.”

  “That would be cool,” said David.

  “I wish I had a pet dragon that would take me to a magical rainbow,” said Madison.

  “I wish I had a unicorn that would fly me anywhere,” said Natalie.

  “I wish I had my own zoo all to myself,” said Isabella. “I could have every species in the world there.”

  “Have fun cleaning that up every day,” said Alex.


  “I wish I was a squirrel,” William said. “I would be able to climb trees really easily.”

  “And get hit by cars really easily,” said Alex.

  “I wish I was a flying hamster,” David said.

  Everybody turned to look at David, because we all had the same question.

  “Why would you want to be a flying hamster?”

  “It would be cool,” David said.

  “Next!” said Mrs. Walters.

  WISH #15:

  I WISH THAT THE WORLD WAS A BETTER PLACE, WITH NO POVERTY, NO LITTER, NO POLLUTION, NO CANCER, NO HIGH GAS PRICES, NO WARS, NO RACISM, NO GLOBAL WARMING, NO DISEASES, NO CRIME, NO DRUGS, NO CHILD IN THE WORLD GOING TO BED HUNGRY AT NIGHT, AND EVERYBODY WAS HAPPY ALL THE TIME. AND I WISH MY BROTHER WOULD STOP THROWING HIS UNDERWEAR AT ME.

  We all knew whose wish it was, because Hannah took about ten minutes to write it all down. And she’s also one of these people who’s always talking about doing good things for poor people and saving the world and stuff.

  “That’s very altruistic of you, Hannah,” said Mrs. Walters. “Does anybody know what that word means?”

  Nobody raised a hand. Not even Ava, and she knows everything.

  “Altruism means unselfish concern for the welfare of others,” Mrs. Walters told us.

  “You mean, like being a sap?” asked Logan.

  “No, Logan,” said Mrs. Walters. “I mean, like caring about people other than yourself.”

  “I hate to bust your bubble, kids, but that’s a multiple wish,” Genie Bob said. “Ya can’t just make a list of wishes, put commas between ’em, and call ’em one wish. That’s the same thing as wishing for more wishes.”

  “You gotta hand it to her for trying,” Alex said.

  “Choose one wish,” ordered Genie Bob.

  “Why?” asked Hannah.

  “Because those are the rules, that’s why,” said Genie Bob. “And I make the rules. Sheesh! Nobody ever grants me any wishes, y’know. There aren’t any perks that come with this job. Boy, I wish I could have just one wish. I would quit this genie gig in a second.”