Bumping Geese 12: Be Careful What You Wish For

In the back of my copy of 'Be Careful What You Wish For' there is a short interview with R.L Stine in which he is asked what he would wish for if he had three wishes. R.L Stine says he only ever had one wish, which is to be a writer.

And somewhere, a monkey's paw curled its finger.

R.L Stine was cursed to spend the rest of his life writing 20 Goosebumps books a week. An impossible task to complete and maintain any consistent level of quality. And so, sometimes, R.L Stine was forced to resort to that most terrible of literary crimes: cliché.

Reader beware, you're in for a cliché

I'm being hyperbolic, of course. There's nothing inherently unsalvageabley wrong with clichés. Everybody uses them. Their wide recognisability is both their flaw and their utility. And let's not forget that subverting a cliché can be a great delight... Until that cliché subversion becomes cliché in itself. But the point is, a cliché lives or dies by how you use it. There is a good way...

And then there is this book.

Stop me if you've heard this before.

Samantha Byrd is a regular girl with hard life. What's so hard about it? Everybody around her is an awful person. She's tall and clumsy, she's bad at basketball, and her family doesn't take her seriously. Her classmates tease her, and when they do, even her one friend Cory laughs with them. They call her "stork" because she is tall and her last name sounds like "bird", and they tell her to fly away. And one day, after her regular bully Judith knees her in the gut during basketball practice, Samantha reaches her limit. She gets on her bike and thinks she might just ride forever, run away and leave her shitty life behind.

But when she gets to the edge of her neighbourhood, she encounters a strange woman named Clarissa. Clarissa is lost and asks Sam to help her find her way. Samantha does and, to return her kindness, Clarissa grants Samantha three wishes. Samantha doesn't believe Clarissa can grant any wishes, but to get Clarissa to leave her alone, she agrees to makes one wish.

Sam wishes to be the strongest player on her school basketball team.

Come the next game, Sam isn't any better at basketball. In fact, she plays worse than ever. But all her teammates become physically weak and lethargic. They can barely stay upright and walk, let alone play basketball. Samantha's wish had come true but with horrific twisted consequences.

The next day, nobody on the basketball team shows up to school. They've all become weak and sickly, but doctors can't explain why other than calling it a bad case of the flu.

So you know how this goes, right? Samantha makes wishes, doesn't think the consequences through, terrible things happen as a result, Sam feels guilty, rinse and repeat.

Clarissa agrees, as part of Sam's second wish, to undo the first wish. Clarissa genuinely wants to make Samantha happy in return for helping her, but she explains magic is unpredictable, so it's not really her fault when things work out wrong. Sam must consider her wishes carefully. And what is Sam's second wish?

In a fit of rage, she wishes her bully Judith would disappear. But the next day, her entire town has disappeared and Sam is all alone. Angst, guilt, and drama ensue.

Clarissa shows up again and offers to reverse the wish as part of the third and final wish. Samantha proves to be an unbelievable dunce and wishes that everything be returned to normal, all wishes undone, except that Judith should think Sam is the best person in the world.

And the next day at school, Judith has changed from bully to obsessed stalker. She follows Sam everywhere, imitates her, dresses like her, breaks into her house to spend time with her. It is, of course, not what Sam wanted. Although I honestly don't know what she wanted or expected from this wish. Sam is a buffoon.

Still unhappy, Sam seeks out Clarissa one more time to ask the wish be undone. Clarissa offers Sam one more wish and since we're near the end now, it's about time for the horrific nightmare inducing Goosebumps twist cliché. Samantha wishes that she had never made any of the wishes, never met Clarissa, and that it had been Judith who met and helped Clarissa, Judith who had three wishes. Sam reasons that any wish Judith makes will ruin her life, like they did for Sam. And the wish is done. And Sam sees Clarissa talking to Judith, and hears Judith make her first wish.

Judith wishes that Samantha Byrd would fly away. And Sam, after pecking at a worm she spots in the dirt, flaps her wings and flies off, watching Judith and Clarissa beneath her, sure that Judith's life will now be terrible as hers.

What the fuck...

When I started this, I did not expect there to be quite so much body horror in these books.

Not that I'm complaining. Body horror is my jam. It never fails to super creep me out.

But as for the rest of this book. It's cliché. Its premise is cliché. Its execution is cliché. Its characters are cliché. And that makes it a real slog to read. It's boring. I've seen it all before. I don't even want to do a deep dive because I feel like I've wasted too much time on this book already.

And even if I wanted to, what would I say? There isn't anything worth unpacking and exploring here. What are the deeper themes of this book?

It's in the fucking title. "Be careful what you wish for". Yeah. Thanks, R.L Stine. Never heard that before.

Well you know what I wish?

I wish I had a better Goosebumps to read.

And somewhere, a monkey's paw curled its finger...