Three wishes joke

The three wishes joke is a form of joke in which the protagonist is given three wishes by a supernatural being, and fails to make the best use of them. Common scenarios include releasing a genie from confinement - perhaps finding an old oil lamp and rubbing it; catching and agreeing to release a mermaid or magical fish; or crossing paths with the devil.

The protagonist of the joke makes their first two wishes and finds that all is well. Often, the third wish is either misinterpreted, or intentionally granted in an awkwardly literal fashion, and cannot be reversed because it is the final wish, resulting in the punch line of the joke. [See Isaac Asimov, "Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor: A Lifetime Collection of Favorite Jokes" (1991), p. 255.] Alternately, the wishes are split between three people, with the last person inadvertently or intentionally messing up or undoing the wishes of the others with their wish to form the punchline.

An example of the three wishes joke runs as follows:

:Three men are stranded on a desert island, when a bottle washes up on the shore. When they uncork the bottle, a genie appears and offers three wishes. The first wishes to be taken to Paris. The genie snaps his fingers, and the man suddenly finds himself standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. The second man wishes that he were in Hollywood, and with a snap of the genie's fingers, he finds himself on a Tinseltown movie set. The third man, now alone on the island, looks around and says, "I wish my friends were back."

Variations

One variation on the theme has the protagonist turning the tables on the genie, who for some contrived reason has placed a condition on the wishes that would result in an opponent of the protagonist also benefitting from the wishes. An example of this joke was used in "The Simpsons" episode, "Homer Simpson, This Is Your Wife". There, a character tells Marge Simpson a joke in which a genie promises to grant a man whatever he wishes, with the caveat that the man's wife gets double whatever the man gets. After first wishing for a house and a car, the man wishes to be beaten "half to death".

A very early version of the joke is found in an 1875 book of Scottish anecdotes. There, a Scottish highlander is asked what his three wishes would be. He first wishes for a lake full of whisky. His second wish is for a similar quantity of good food. When asked for his third wish, after a moment of indecision, he asks for a "second" lake full of whisky. [A. Hislop, ed., "The book of Scottish anecdote" (1874), p. 96.]

Still another variation has the confused protagonist suddenly finding himself in the presence of the genie, who informs him that he has one wish left; he has just used the second wish to completely undo the effect of the first, including his own memory of making it. Undaunted, the protagonist makes his third wish, only to have the genie comment wryly (just before disappearing) that he wished for the same thing the first time.

In fiction

The format is not always used for humor. In "The Monkey's Paw", a horror short story by author W. W. Jacobs, the paw of a dead monkey is a talisman that grants its possessor three wishes, but the wishes come with an enormous price.

The 1967 movie, "Bedazzled", and the "remake", are essentially movie-length stories relating such a joke, although the protagonist is given seven wishes rather than three.

References