The wishbone is a strange tradition that creates unnecessary competition (mostly between my 13-year-old sister and I), but it’s one that can teach kids about taking dreams seriously.
At a Thanksgiving dinner in 2003, I was given my first wishbone. By some dumb luck, I won the right piece and thus was “granted” one wish. In my immature haste, I wished for a pet unicorn...and immediately started crying because I knew I had wasted my wish on the impossible. It has always been my nature to want to believe in fantasy, to desire it so deeply that it hurts, but to eventually accept its improbability and move on. The unfortunate wish-choice of the unicorn was followed by extensive research -- or as extensive as one can get in the library of an elementary school -- on horses. I became determined to find a horse that I could transform into a quasi-unicorn substitute with papier-mâché and probably a lot of tape and string. I never got that horse, only because my parents convinced me there was no room for it in our house, which I agreed was a logical argument but that was the beginning of my metamorphosis into the ardent realist I am today.
When a kid takes hold of his or her section of the wishbone, they enter a game of fate (probably actually complex physics that I do not understand concerning force and pressure and the way a turkey bone breaks, who knows). Then, they are filled with the hope of winning the special side and getting one precious wish. Looking back, that wonder and hope was the best part of being a kid. Not just when playing with a wishbone, but in general, being so sure and yet unsure if magic was real and if someday you would get super powers and be able to change the world in an awesome way. When we grow up, most of us lose that part of us that wanted to be something spectacular. Life gets challenging and then all we want is to get by and make it through. “Take no risks, make no mistakes, have no regrets,” seems like a mantra for our generation. We are afraid to do more than exist, to love and to simply be.
At some point everyone has a period of crisis, it is a part of being human. We can become lost in ourselves and in our troubles. Dreams are what keep us going when we experience dark times and failure. My childhood dream of having a horse was just one of many, and several of them were much more realistic and important like going to college and traveling to Spain. The wishbone taught me to take my wishes, make them dreams, and turn them into reality. To be able to harness your childlike hopefulness and use it to change your life is something we all should aspire to do. But first, you’re going to need a turkey.
