Three Wishes

Three Wishes  (E) This is one of my Bob Foley Fish Stories #2057733 by Chris Breva

There was once a fisherman named Bob Foley. He lived on a river called White Water. His favorite past time was fishing. Bob always fished in the same place. He fished at a Locks and Dam on the White Water River. The natives knew the place by Pier Seventeen. Unlike anybody else who ever fished at Pier Seventeen however Bob was constantly turning up some new mysterious situation at Pier Seventeen. It is very odd because it never happened to anybody else. It was always poor old Bob.
Bob thought about giving up fishing but he just couldn’t bring himself to do so. He actually enjoyed fishing when strange things did not happen. Of course strange things consistently happened to him. Each time he would talk himself into trying it one more time. He was like a child who kept getting burned on a hot stove, but never learned to quit touching the stove. This Saturday morning was no different. It was a hot day in July and Bob talked himself into going fishing. He was convinced that surely this time nothing bad would happen to him. So he loaded up his pole, his tackle, and his bait and went down to Pier Seventeen. He had a new lure he was just dying to try out. The man at the bait shop had told him the lure would practically hunt down the largest bass in the water and insert itself into the bass’ mouth. Well he didn’t quite believe that but it made the lure look mighty appealing to him. So he secured it to the line and cast it into the water. The lure had no more than hit the water when lo and behold he snagged a whopper! He fought with the bass for a good ten minutes and finally got it reeled in. He went to take it off the hook when the strangest thing happened. The bass spoke to him! “Bob” it said. “Bob please let me go. Please don’t eat me. I am a magic bass and if you let me go I will grant you three wishes.”
Well Bob didn’t believe in magic but he couldn’t bring himself to eat a talking fish so he let the bass go. A few minutes later he decided to go to his truck and look for a missing tackle box. He had a little bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder going on. He had already looked in the bed of the truck for the missing tackle box three times so he knew it was not there. His Obsessive-compulsive disorder made him go look again. Still it wasn’t there. “I wish I could find that tackle box” he said.
He went to turn around to go back to the river and tripped over something. He looked down and it was his missing tackle box. Suddenly he heard the bass say “That’s wish number one Bob. I’d be careful. You have two wishes remaining.”
He walked back down to the river and prepared to cast is line in again. A bead of sweat ran down his brow and got in his eye. Without thinking he said “I wish it would cool down a little bit. Suddenly a cool breeze began to blow. The bass said that’s wish number two Bob. You only have one wish left. Use it wisely.
Bob sat and carefully considered his situation. There were so many things his wife and he needed. A new house would be nice. A Swiss bank account with nine zeroes would be nice as well. There were just so many things. He heard himself say “I wish I could make up my mind!”