Be Careful What You Wish For

You know the joke about the guy who walks into the bar with a foot tall companion who starts playing a tiny grand piano on the bar.  The bartender says “Wow, that’s amazing!  How did you find him?” 

The guy says he found a magic lamp and after he rubbed it a genie appeared and offered to grant him one wish.  “Wow!” the bartender says again. “You’re a lucky guy!”

“Really?  You think I wished for a twelve inch pianist?” 

Today I was reminded, yet again, to be very careful what I wish for.  Another lesson I have yet to learn.  I wished to live in the South Pacific and I do.  Rats, pigs, chickens and all.  I forgot to specify the type of living here I was wishing for, apparently.  I was kind of envisioning more of a resort lifestyle.  Ah, well.  The view is the same.

Most recently, I wished that we’d get a really good turnout at the recently started reading center.  The first night we had 26.  Second night 50+.  Tonight, the second week, we had over 100.  According to the high school girl I asked to count we had 174.  Ages ranged from 3 to 17.I don’t think it was that many but I was a little busy with the 60 or so kids I had who are at the level of figuring out what the alphabet is. 

There were three of us.  The minister’s wife.  The minister’s daughter.  And me.  I did this by choice.  The minister’s wife has acknowledged that when her husband got the call she was not an immediate convert.  I don’t know their daughter well enough but I’m guessing this wasn’t her idea of the ideal way to spend a Wednesday evening.  She was a trooper, though.

We re-grouped after the 2 hour session to discuss how to do crowd control on Friday.  We’ve enlisted the high school kids to help with the little kids and I’ll spend time with them after the session to make up for it.  More time for me, but only fair.

There are few books and little reading in the homes.  The same is true in the school.  The kids are hungry for it and let’s face it, I’m a rock star.  This is triple the number of kids they’ve ever attracted before.  Now I’m wishing to get more English-speaking, literate helpers from the village to join the effort.  How could that go wrong?