It’s an age-old story told in variations for millennia.

You find a bottle in the sand, you rub the sand off, out pops a genie and says, “You have three wishes.”

This leads to the famous cautionary aphorism, “Be careful what you wish for.”

I myself am guilty of story overuse.

Like my analysis of the three-wish syndrome.

Or the not-unrelated  message-in-a-bottle.

The guy is stranded on a desert isle. (Some people would misread that as a “dessert aisle.”) An empty bottle floats ashore. He grabs his pen and paper, which he always keeps handy just in case, writes, “Help!” stuffs it in the bottle, corks it, throws it back into the waves.

Years and thousands of miles later, a guy walking along the beach sees a floating bottle, picks it up, uncorks it, reads the message, “Help!”

He takes his pen which he always keeps handy and writes, “Where are you?” re-inserts it, corks it, throws it back into the ocean.

Ha Ha, joke, Buh-dump-bum.

The current story I heard just today (I wave at my daughter) is of the genie-in-the-bottle variety.

The bottle-finder un-corker genie-releaser was scratching mosquito bites. The first wish was, “I wish all blood-suckers were gone from the world.”

Suddenly all mosquitos were not here, all fleas vanished, all the Royals and half of Washington DC was vacant.

Joke, ha ha ha.

The wise choice of the first wish could lead the perspicacious wisher to withhold the next two wishes, and we could enter a golden age like heaven on earth.  

Of course we all know the famous variation, where the third wish is to have unlimited wishes.

That gives rise to an explanation for how the genie got in the bottle.

He was so exhausted by satisfying those unlimited wishes that he crawled back into the bottle and corked himself.