When we lived in the Great Stone House on the farm, there was a radio that sat on a little table next to the staircase in the kitchen. As best as I can recall, it looked something like this, except it was whitish, not blue.

There were two or three steps in front of a white painted door with the staircase to the second floor behind that door.

I have one vivid memory of listening to a program on that radio while sitting on those steps one morning.

It must have been some sort of a children’s show, and I guess I would have been about five years old or so. The program was was a little radio play about a boy who’s granted a wish, though I don’t recall how that came about. Anyway his wish was that everything he ate or drank should taste like ice cream.

And his wish was granted!

At first everything was fine. He began to eat things like vegetables at the dinner table that his mother had never been able to get him to eat before, but after a while he got thirsty, and he discovered that drinking water, which also tasted just like ice cream, wasn’t able to quench his thirst. Nothing, in fact, could quench his thirst.

In a panic he went back to whomever had granted his wish and pleaded for the wish to be revoked.

Which it was.

And apparently there was some sort of moral to the story.

The problem was that even to my five year old self (if that’s what I was, maybe I was six), the story just didn’t make any sense. And it still doesn’t.

There’s a difference between food and water tasting like something else and being transformed into something else. And the boy had only wished that what he ate and drank should taste like ice cream, not that it should be turned into ice cream.

There was something seriously wrong with that story.

It could have been easily fixed, however. The boy could have wished that everything he ate be turned into ice cream. Then it might have made some sense. Though I think he would have gotten bloated not thirsty as there’s plenty of water content in ice cream. Alternatively, he could have kept the wish the same, but instead of having a problem with not being able to quench his thirst, he could have just gotten sick of the taste of ice cream. Too much of a good thing. That also would have worked.

Anyway, it’s another one of those memories that has stuck with me for nearly 70 years.