I just wanted a centrally located place in my kitchen to chop vegetables and have those cute barstool-type chairs that swivel for when I have company. Sure, I almost never have company other than my eccentric neighbor who’s always bragging about how he can grant anyone three wishes.
Look, I fucked up. I may or may not have disclosed to Thad, the aforementioned neighbor, that I wished I had a kitchen island. And when I say, “I may or may not have,” I mean, “I most definitely did.”
Who knew that Thad, a guy who claims he’s a four-thousand-year-old cursed genie from Mesopotamia, wouldn’t be familiar with the intricacies of multiple-meaning words in the modern English language? Who even knew that genies were real?! I didn’t, which is exactly what I told Thad before he replied, “Don’t test me.”
When I laughed in his face and dared him to grant me even one wish, I should have known that a quite expansive piece of sandy land would appear right where I was standing, in the middle of the kitchen, while the Atlantic Ocean gushed in all around it.
I assume it was the Atlantic anyway. It’s pretty difficult to tell; it’s not like Thad gave me a map. He just gave me a ginormous island with a single palm tree, along with a variety of ancient STDs. Yes, fine, I hooked up with Thad repeatedly. But, that was before I knew he would take my whole wish thing so literally. And long before I knew about the 3,964-year age gap.
What can I say? I was lonely without a kitchen island.
In fact, this entire being-stranded-on-an-island-with-only-my-kitchen-in-sight-miles-away episode could have been avoided had I just had a kitchen island (of the marble variety, not the sandy kind). Then, I could have thrown sophisticated parties with normal company who gather around the island to gaze upon my vegetables and laugh at all my funny attempts to cook.
But, no, I didn’t have that island or those swivel chairs or those normal friends; although in hindsight, I really could have just bought those chairs and placed them around a table or something. But here we are.
Now I’ll never be able to host those parties unless people attend via ferry and supply the vegetables, chopping instruments, and cutting board. Who am I kidding? I don’t know how to make a fire and no one wants to sit around on the sand eating raw broccolini.
The saddest part about all this is that I’m really hungry and I can see my pantry on the horizon; I had brownie mix in that pantry. Brownie mix. Damn my incessant desire for chopping vegetables on a freestanding cabinet mere feet from ample counter space that could also do the trick just as well!
I’ve officially learned my lesson. Next time, I’m asking for a kitchen peninsula.