Wishing On A Lizard

One of those weird things I did in my childhood was wishing on a lizard.

People would wish on a falling star, in a prayer, but on a lizard…?

That was my cousin’s idea.

I spent many years with Tinuk. We shared childhood and adolescent together, and ceased only after she got married and had to move thousand miles away, in The Netherlands. We shared beautiful dreams, crazy things, and crazy ideas. And this was one of her crazy ideas, one of those many things I had no idea of where she got from.

One day while sitting by a river in front of my house, a lizard passed by. And she shouted, “I want to be pretty!” I looked at her face confusedly.

She said, “Say your wishes to a lizard passing you by.” She said people had told her so, and what you have wished may come true. Whether it was true or not, I started to follow her advice since then, and thought so much about what I wanted to wish for, so each time I would see a lizard, I could say my wishes immediately, before the lizard gone.

My very first wish to a lizard was “I want to be pretty,” exactly the same as Tinuk’s. And the second was “I want to be a genius.” And the last and mostly forgotten, “I want to be rich.”

It has been almost two decades I’ve been following Tinuk’s advice for wishing on a lizard. Though I gradually stop doing it since a few years ago, sometimes though, when I see a lizard with an amazing skin passing me by and lingers for a while, I still do it.

Tinuk might have always been a pretty girl, marrying a wealthy man with respectable career, owns a house and a cute baby girl, the things she might have wished on lizards passed by her. She might had not been one of the best students when she graduated from university, and might have not been in a manager position of her career, but perhaps, these were not the things she wished for.

These lizards might have heard my wishes and granted my first and second wishes, as I never had problem with weight or hair—only some pimples that I can get rid off after I see a beautician :D and that I haven’t had such a real hard time in college. However, as I always forgot to say the third wish, it seemed that the lizards always forgot to grant it as well, as I see myself still have to be careful with my expenses, and keep wondering how to make more money.

Anyway…such a naïve little girl hardly knows really well what she has to wish for. Wish I knew it better, I would have wished not only for such physical things like beauty, brain, and money. I would have wished for a peaceful world, an eternal cease of wars (political, ethnic or civil wars), an absence of terrorism and the insane doctrines of the religious terrorists, and… the most important of all for me and my people, that is the real improvements in my own country, nation and people—wise decisions I need to hear from the government, a change on the mindset of the people, a stability of prices (at least, only a slight increase), zero corruption, getting free of debts, and free access to or low fares for human basic needs—health, education, transportation.

Now I’ve realized these things, and I don’t think lizards can do anything with them. These take an awareness, a leader, and later, a nation, before they will take the world. They take me, and any individual to start with.