The next day Jon showed the binder to Karyn. "I figured out something that would help, Karyn" he explained. "I put the wishes in a binder, and wished that I could reverse them by tearing the pages out."
Karyn looked at the binder and briefly had an odd expression on her face, saying "Don't show me that, it's too boring." Then she turned away.
"But it's the binder I'm using for the wishes, I want you to see what I did."
"Of course I do, I..." Her gaze went to the binder and again she decided the binder wasn't worth bothering with. "Wait a minute, somehow when I try to look at it I just think it's not very interesting. Did you make a wish?"
"Yeah, I did, Karyn. Do you think I made a mistake?"
"I think you might have. Not only can't I look at the binder, but what happens if you lose it or if it gets torn up somehow?"
"Well," answered Jon, "I don't know. I said I reversed the wishes when I tear the pages, not by someone else tearing the pages."
"You didn't say someone else could reverse the wish that way, but you didn't say they couldn't either. So the stone got to decide that. Maybe someone else can."
"There's one way to find out. I wish for a taco."
A soft steak taco with sour cream on a paper plate appeared in front of Jon.
"Now you tear out the page and let's see what happens..."
Karyn closed her eyes and opened the binder to what she thought was the last page. "Is that it?"
Jon saw the wish--'I wish for a taco.' "It's the right one" he said.
Karyn ripped up the page. The taco disappeared.
"It did go away" said Jon as Karyn opened her eyes.
"Jon," said Karyn, "that's not the only problem. What if you make a wish that you want to be permanent. Let's say you're falling off a cliff and you wish to land gently. You don't want to have a chance to die every time someone tears a page in the notebook, right?"
"Hmm, good point. Maybe we should have talked it over before I tried this. I..." He paused. "No, I'm not going to wish for anything complicated unless we're both sure it's not going to cause more problems than it solves. We need to figure out a way that you can look at the book first.... oh DUH."
"What is it, Jon?"
"I made the wish about people looking at the book after I made the wish about having the book and tearing out wishes. So that wish is in the book and I can tear it out." He opened the binder to the last page. There was the wish: 'I wish that the binder would look like something that everyone except for me would find boring therefore not interested in looking at.' He tore the page to shreds, and made a new wish instead. "I wish that this binder would look like something that everyone--except for Karyn and me and anyone else I want to read the binder--would find boring therefore not interested in looking at."
Karyn glanced at the binder and this time felt no strange compulsion to ignore it. She saw that a page had appeared in the binder, and on it was the wish Jon had just made.
That still didn't solve the whole problem, but it was a good start.
"By the way" said Jon, "I'm hungry. I wish I had a can of Coke and another taco, like the ones they serve in that new Casa Mexicana place." The food materialized right in front of Jon. "Want anything, Karyn?"
