in just trunks and pressed close together to read this vase stuff, and the big one had put his arm across the other's shoulder. I raised my camera and got ready to step into the room. Then I began listening to what they were reading. It was real strange.

No, you won't glue this back together and it's too bad because this vase is actually more valuable as an antique than for what you'll use it. This little two bit bargain that you've dusted so irregularly was thrown together one warm April afternoon in the year 999 A.D. This inscription is in the language and vernacular of the two who finally discovered its secret and who, being human, will destroy these pieces after they've finished reading this. Oh, yes, you will whether you want to or not. The substance of this whole affair is that you two kids now have at your disposal three wishes apiece to rescue yourselves from any danger which threatens you. Just specify the type of rescue you desire and it's yours, dears. There's one condition however. You must first smash these pieces into small, unreadable bits, Now naturally this whole thing will throw you

both into a purple dither and you'll simply throw away your first two wishes. But the third is a question. Try to make it count. It might be instructive to tell you to WAIT. Wait and wait and wait. In fact, you'll be wise if you never use the third one. If this sounds fabulously mad to you then all this ceramic bother has been wasted on you. Perhaps it was a silly idea in the first place.

When they'd finished, they just sat there. I was kind of stumped myself. Then it hit me all of a sudden that they'd move out of that intimate, abnormal pose any second. I stepped into the room and raised the old camera. They looked up startled. The pieces of the vase fell on the floor and smashed to bits. And in the couple seconds it took me to get them in the finder, they both said exactly the same thing to cover up for the other. If one of them had been just a bit more selfish than the other, they wouldn't have gotten into any trouble but they were just sentimental enough perverts to say in chorus: "I wish I was a woman!" Sure, sure, I snapped the camera just a

second too late.

Mike Schwartz

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