Three wishes joke

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are many variations of the three wishes joke. Typically, a person finds that some supernatural being is willing to grant that person three wishes. Common scenarios include releasing a genie from confinement - perhaps finding an old oil lamp and rubbing it; catching and agreeing to release a mermaid or magical fish; or crossing paths with the devil.

The protagonist of the joke makes their first two wishes and finds that all is well. Often, the third wish is either misinterpreted, or intentionally granted in an awkwardly literal fashion, and cannot be reversed because it is the final wish, resulting in the punch line of the joke. Alternately, the wishes are split between three people, with the last person inadvertently or intentionally messing up or undoing the wishes of the others with their wish to form the punchline.

The 1967 movie, Bedazzled, and the remake, are essentially movie-length stories relating such a joke (although the protagonist is extended seven wishes rather than three).

Examples of the three wishes joke:

• Three men are stranded on a desert island, when a bottle washes up on the shore. When they uncork the bottle, a genie appears and offers three wishes. The first wishes to be taken to Paris. The genie snaps his fingers, and the man suddenly finds himself standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. The second man wishes that he were in Hollywood, and with a snap of the genie's fingers, he finds himself on a Tinseltown movie set. The third man, now alone on the island, looks around and says, "I wish my friends were back."

Another variation of this joke has the protagonist turning the tables on the genie, who has placed a condition on the wishes that would result in an opponent of the protagonist also benefitting from the wishes:

• A nephrologist (doctor) is out playing his usual Thursday morning round of golf. The game isn't going so well and the doctor walks to the rough to retrieve his ball when he comes across an old oil lamp. Trying to get some of the dirt off, he rubs the lamp against his sleeve, and a genie pops out. The genie begins, "I am the genie of this lamp. Like all genies, I am obliged to grant you three wishes. But be warned, any wish I grant for you, all of the lawyers in the world will receive double." The nephrologist thinks for a minute, then says, "Okay. I want a red Lamborghini." The genie responds, "Very well, so long as you understand that all the lawyers in the world will each receive two cars." The nephrologist nods his agreement, and a red car appears. The nephrologist looks surprised for a second, then states to the genie "I want a million dollars." A bag containing a million one-dollar bills appears in the back seat of the car. The nephrologist just stands silently for a minute, then begins, "I've given this a lot of thought. Rather than do something for myself, I want to use my last wish to help somebody else. I want to donate a kidney."

The above example is also often told with one spouse receiving the wishes, but the other spouse getting the doubled bounty, or the mother in law - rather than wishing to donate a kidney, the wishing spouse might wish to be "scared half to death," or "beaten half to death."

A final variation provides a twist wherein asking for the wishes is shown to be an exercise in fantasy:

While a husband and wife were out enjoying a round of golf, the wife hit her shot far off the mark, and it crashed through a plate glass window of a house near the course. When the couple peeked inside the home, they found a gentleman sitting on the couch with a turban on his head, next to a broken vase on the floor.

The couple apologized for breaking the window, but the man replied, "I am a genie who was trapped in that vase, and I am so grateful to have been released that, I will grant you two wishes, though the third I will keep for myself."

The husband and wife agreed each took one wish, the husband wishing to be the world's greatest golfer, and the wife wishing for $100,000,000 worth of jewelry. The genie said "Done, and done!" He assured the man that, upon returning to the course, he would find that his golf skills had improved so as to surpass all others, and he assured the wife that, upon returning to her home, she would find priceless jewelry in every corner of the house. The genie now said, "For my wish I would like to have my way with your wife. I have not been with a woman for many years and, after all, I have given you great wealth and talent." The husband and wife agreed.

After the genie and wife finished, the genie asked the wife how old she and her husband were, to which she responded, "We're both thirty years old."

The genie then asked, "Aren't you two a little old to still believe in genies?"

The computer game Planescape: Torment contains a more macabre version of the joke, told by the character Morte:

An elderly man was sitting alone on a dark path, right? He wasn't certain of which direction to go, and he'd forgotten both where he was traveling to and whom he was. He'd sat down for a moment to rest his weary legs, and suddenly looked up to see an elderly woman before him. She grinned toothlessly and with a cackle, spoke: "Now your *third* wish. What will it be?"

"Third wish?" The man was baffled. "How can it be a third wish if I haven't had a first and second wish?"

"You've had two wishes already," the hag said, "but your second wish was for me to return everything to the way it was before you had made your first wish. That's why you remember nothing; because everything is the way it was before you made any wishes." She cackled at the poor berk. "So it is that you have one wish left."

"All right," said the man, "I don't believe this, but there's no harm in wishing. I wish to know who I am."

"Funny," said the old woman as she granted his wish and disappeared forever. "That was your first wish."

In a slightly different version, a cowpoke is riding on a ranch and hears a desperate call for help, just beyond some trees past the fence. He hitches his horse to the fencepost and runs past the trees to find a woman pinned by her legs in a riverbed. He frees her and resuscitates her, and she reveals to him that she is a sorceress and will grant him three wishes, as they return inside the fence to where thre horse is hitched. He says, "well, first, I'd like to be able to find oil on my property." "It shall be done," the sorceress says. "By tomorrow you will dig a well and strike oil." "Second, I'd like to have a face like Tom Cruise and a build like Arnold Schwarzenegger," he says. "You will have that when you wake up tomorrow," she says. "And your third wish?" With some embarrassment, the cowpoke says, "I'd like to be as well equipped sexually as my horse here." "That wish too will be granted." With a smile the sorceress vanishes. When the man awakes in the morning he hears one of the ranch hands holler, "OIL!" He looks at himself in the mirror and sees a Tom Cruise-like face and a Schwarzenegger build. And then he remembers he was riding his mare the day before.

The film Boondock Saints features an extremely racist spin on the three wishes joke.