What is the Last Thing You Wished for Yourself?

Would you consider New Year’s Resolutions to be wishes?

New Year, New You

The top 5 New Year’s resolutions of 2019

• Eat Healthier

• Exercise More

• Lose Weight

• Save More and Spend Less

• Learn a new skill or hobby

All are good for us. Of those, only one feels like any fun.

We could also look at what dead people wish for us.   As in, their last wishes. 

We told you about Vera Anderson’s traveling ashes. 

Have you heard about Canadian Charles Millar?  Charles wished his estate be given to the woman who gives birth to the most babies in the ten years after his death.

What?

Adorable crying baby!

Charles was a Toronto lawyer who never married and had no children. But he did have a sense of humor. Charles liked to play pranks.  One of his favorite was to leave $1 bills on the sidewalk, then watch the expressions of passersby as they furtively pocketed them. 

His will had all sorts of silly requests.

• He willed the use of his Jamaica vacation home to three lawyers who did not get along with each other.

• He willed one share of the town brewery to every practicing protestant minister in Toronto (it was the 1920’s and ministers everywhere were preaching against Demon Rum).

But his biggest wish was to give the remainder of his estate to the Toronto mother who gave birth to the most children in the ten years immediately following his death.

Charles died in 1926, igniting The Great Stork Derby of the 1930’s in Canada!

The Great Story Derby book

It was the Great Depression, and readers all across Canada followed stories of the families in the running for the most-babies prize.

In the end, four women split the prize.  Guess how many babies each had in those ten years.

Nine!

Winning family with nine children

Each received $125,000.  A lot of money in 1936. A lot of money now.

Can you imagine the diapers?  The stretch marks? The endless trips to the pediatrician and, worst of all, the decades of PTA meetings?

Two other women were disqualified.  One had two stillbirths, and the other had babies with someone else in addition to with her husband.  But the courts gave them a consolation prize of $12,500 each.

Winning family with 12 children.

Forget boring resolutions and the silly wishes of dead people.

What do you wish for yourself? 

If time and money were no concern, what would you realistically do?

What do you wish for your family?

I Dream of Jeannie

PS.  It’s like a genie gave you three wishes.  One for yourself, one for your family, one bonus wish.  Do you know the old genie joke?  If you wish for world peace… you’ll find you are the only person left in the world!