Weird Wishes: Ask a Genie

First a toast to Mrs. Tycoon on her birthday! May her coming year be full of music, mountain lakes, tropical fish, and Bordeaux cherry ice cream.

And now let's welcome our genie-in-residence, to mete out another dollop of sagacity.

Dear Genie,
We've been hearing the word "weird" a lot lately, directed at a certain political figure, and I feel ambivalent about it. On one hand, it feels nice to see weird behavior acknowledged as weird. On the other, I don't love seeing "weird" tossed out as an insult. Aren't we all weird in our own way? To celebrate weirdness, can you tell us the weirdest wish you've ever heard?
Signed, A Friend of the Weird

Dear Weird Sister,
You're right about all of us being weird. Imagine you wrote down every feature that distinguishes one human from another, and plotted every living person in their place on some enormous chart. If you traced your finger to the middle column of the middle row of the very middle page, to the place reserved for the perfectly average person, you wouldn't find a name there. Even if you limited your chart to, say, the eight most obvious human traits, you still wouldn't find one single person who was average in all those ways. Sure, there's someone out there who's technically the World's Most Average Person—someone with 3.98 limbs, 0.92 testicles, and 1/64th of a mustache, but they can't be average in every respect, and their averageness makes them extremely unique.

But that's all useless conjecture to the only hexagon in Triangle City. It may be true that no one is "normal," but that doesn't stop hoards of people from trying to root out the weirdos. Like you, I think that's a rotten endeavor.

And yet I don't mind seeing Donald Trump called "weird." Trump has never tried to hide his selfish cruelty (aside from denying it any time you ask.) His opponents have endlessly pointed out his self-dealing, or his giddy meanness, and it hasn't slowed him down. Trump's supporters think of cruelty as a necessary part of life, and of selfishness as universal human trait. They say, "Sure, he's cruel and selfish, but so's everybody, and he's clearing the weirdos out of my way." Now Trump's opponents have found a word that says, no, actually, he's not the guy we'd all be if we could get away with it—he's really, really strange. His selfishness is odd and sad. His cruelty isn't just deplorable, it's also freakish. He's actually that weird kid with his back to the ballgame, way out in right field.

I say that as a friend and champion of weird kids with their backs to the ballgame, way out in right field.

As to the weirdest wish I've ever granted, I'm not sure how I'd pick one. I can't choose the most uncommon, since there are thousands of one-time requests. I couldn't pick the most awful one, either, or the most deviant, since that's all subjective, and too hard to narrow down. I can think of a few wishes that I'm absolutely sure I'll never hear again, as long as I live. The first that comes to mind was one I heard, quite a long time ago, from a ten-year-old Yorkshire girl.

She wished good health for her mother and her siblings (conspicuously forgetting her father) and for a good husband when the time came. Then I said the magic words, which are "Anything else?"

"Water turkeys," she said. "I hate them."

"Can't blame you there," I told her. "They're so mean. Shall I get rid of them?"

"No," she said. "Papa wouldn't like that."

"What do you have in mind?" I said.

"You should make their eggs really big, so when they lay an egg, it hurts. That would pay them back for all the biting."

"Wow," I said, impressed with her vindictiveness. "Devious. But doable."

"And they should give me eggs made of gold."

"Naturally," I said.

"And they should have a stupid name, that makes them feel stupid whenever they hear it. Something like doook. No, that sounds too much like duck."

"You want to give water turkeys a new name, that makes them feel ashamed?"

"Yeah. They should really hate it. Make sure they hate it. What about goo—goose!"

And that's how I came to spend a whole wet winter visiting all the towns in England, casting memory charms on the people and curses on the water tur—sorry, force of habit—on the geese.