There once was a magical talisman
that appeared in an English speaking countryside. As the story goes, it was the shriveled foot of a badger
of some sort, and if you held it and closed your eyes and said out loud any wish at all, that wish would come true.
But only if you also said, “Please.” It was never explained how the country folk ever
came to figure out such a thing, but they did. And they were all having turns at their wish, since it only
gave one wish per person. And that was all. There was only one catch. This
mummified rodent’s paw never got any wish right. Mind you, it was close, but it never was exactly
what you wished for. But it wasn’t like in that other story where people died. The
wishes ended up generally OK. If you wished for a new house, for instance, you might get a blue mouse.
It’s not that a blue mouse wasn’t cool, and everybody would come and be amazed by your blue mouse, and
you could even use her to get free drinks, because who wouldn’t buy you a beer if you had a blue mouse sitting next
to you on the bar, but it wasn’t what you wished for.
Like I said, everybody in the village was having a go at the paw, and they were all being
civil about it, when word got back to the local Lord. Lord not in the sense of how some have come to recognize
an all caring God, but Lord in the sense that the 17th Century translators wanted their subjects to equate lords
with the vengeful wrath of the Almighty Yahweh. So the Lord sent for the foot, which is a nice euphemism
for taking whatever he wanted. And then he got, which is a nice word for made, all these people to make
wishes, which was just mean, because he kept the stuff, and the people would never be able to wish again if they ever got
the chance, not like that’s likely to ever happen. But, see, this Lord wasn’t having these
people wish just so he might get something interesting, even though he did, but he was studying the wishes. And
after a while, he came up with a pattern. And eventually he – and a whole lot of other very smart
people who generally never got any credit for anything they did – came up with a way to actually get what you wanted.
If you wanted a big gun, for instance, you could wish for pig rum. And it worked. Of
course, his lordship never actually wished for anything. He had others do that for him. After
all, he didn’t want to waste his wish when there might have been something better to wish for.
It didn’t take long, though, before
it just wasn’t fun anymore. It wasn’t that the Lord tired from constantly getting more stuff;
that’s giving him way too much moral fiber, whatever that is. It’s that there was no surprise
in it. There was no uncertainty. When you got a winged platypus you really didn’t
care any longer if you ever got a ringed satin purse. But who would’ve thought to wish for a flying
platypus? Who would even imagine such a thing? The Lord decided to lock the badger’s
paw away, deep in the castle, against the arguments of his advisors. They argued that the right thing to
do would be to let the people have it back. It would be great for publicity, and what harm could it do?
The Lord, though, in one of the few times he ever attempted to justify any of his actions, argued that the foot would
eventually end up with someone, though not necessarily his equal, with just as much power to do exactly what he had done.
And in the end, his greed would make more people unhappy by making them realize all the things they’re never
going to have, than any happiness that the foot might bring to those who happened to get it. It was not
an argument that allowed a rebuttal. And so he locked it away forever, which was one of the very few humane
things he ever did in his entire life.
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