Jack was a history major and one of the required courses ( though nobody knew why) was a course on the history of childhood poems. When the instructor called his name he smiled. Then he said to the class, “ we have a celebrity with us this semester B Nimble himself is here. He can tell you first hand about the history of that poem. Jack wished he was dead. But he survived.

He graduated with a degree in history. Then he went on to get a Doctor’s degree. He did his dissertation on the history of the rise and fall of the cow moon cult in Northern Nevada. This was the group that believed a cow had jumped over the moon aided by super aliens. They were waiting for the aliens to return..

Jack married and had two children. He became a professor at Calvin Lutheran University in Two Bluffs , Idaho. But even there that stupid poem followed him. From time to time one of his students was bound to say, “ Jump over any candlesticks lately Professor?” O! How he wished he had not been so quick to jump.

Now teaching was not the whole of Jack’s life. From the time he was little he had wanted to do good deeds. His parents taught him that  God expects you to help others. So he had tried. But they always seemed to go wrong. There was that little old lady he helped across the street. He caught his foot on the curb and fell pulling her with him into a huge mud puddle. He was lucky he didn’t get sued . Then there was the lady whose groceries he helped carry in to the house. He tripped over a child’s toy and dropped the bag and the milk broke and poured over everything. After that nobody wanted Jack to help them.

But still deep in his heart he felt a need to serve others. So  he set up the first food pantry in Two Bluffs. This good deed couldn’t go wrong because he just paid the bills, rented the building, and let others do the stocking and the carrying. It was a massive good deed.

Thus one day he found a little man in a green suit with shoes that curled on the end in his office. The little man, of course, was an elf. The elf

was there to grant him one wish.  However, at this time the elf commu

nity was trying something new. There had been so many complaints about bad wishes that they were trying on an experimental basis giving out one wish and one preview. The person making the wish could tell the