Wish in One Hand, Shit in the Other

"And see which one gets full faster."

This was our grandfather's standard response whenever the word "wish" would unsuspectingly creep into a sentence. Kind of a snotty thing to say to a kid, but he had his reasons for being rather unsympathetic toward juvenile, subjunctive desires: he killed a bear at the age of thirteen to feed an authentically hungry family, enlisted at the age of fourteen (to ease burden on same family), and at sixteen endured what was reportedly the longest sustained depth-charging of a submarine during WWII.

Tell that to your kids the next time they get weepy for a new iPod.

Don't tell it to us, however, as we'd rather have the iPod. Furthermore, unlike him, we don't get mean in the vicinity of gin, and that should count for something, even outside of puritanical circles. Just because you killed a fucking bear doesn't mean you get to be a bastard, and just because you were a member of the putatively greatest generation doesn't mean you were the greatest human.

In any case, he's been dead for twenty years, and so far as we know he won't fuck with our wishes tonight. For no particular reason, and in no particular order, we therefore reckon we'll admit the Top Three Things we wish we were doing right now:

Drinking with Hussey in Edinburgh
Using the maul to get through oak and manzanita
Not being able more or less accurately to predict how the rest of our life is going to unfold

If nostalgia is ever mentioned in our presence, we'll rightly denounce that and deny this. But right now, at this late hour, shitting in either one of our hands seems like a pretty poor substitute for what we're wishing.