I wish a had a nagging, dull pain in my back that made it hard for me to stand up without wincing. I wish I was a woman going through a custody battle with her abusive ex-husband. I wish I were stupid, short, ugly, and I wish that the only way I could get around town was by begging passersby for bus fare.

I wish I smoked three packs a day and couldn't get going in the morning until I hacked up a giant purple ball of blood and pus from my shrivelled, charred lungs. I wish my hands wouldn't stop shaking until I had that first triple scotch at ten in the morning. I wish I had warts on my penis.

I wish the only fun I ever got out of life was eating my toenail clippings, and I wish that I woke up every morning praying for my own death. I wish that every woman I meet would point at me and laugh and laugh and keep on laughing until they couldn't see through their tears, and I couldn't see through mine.

I wish I was a black man in a white man's world, and had to pull my shit just to get my share, because the man is always keepin' the brothaz down. I wish I hadn't declawed my cat, and that he'd come up to my head in the middle of the night and ripped my eyes out. I wish I had absolutely no idea where my next meal was coming from, and I wish you weren't reading this.

I wish I had AIDS, and cancer, and Alzheimer's, and walked the earth a hopeless, piteous shell of a man screaming up to the heavens to wrest me from the mortal coil. I wish I had paper cuts all up and down my arms. And I wish you hated me.

I wish everyone I knew and loved were killed in a terrorist bombing, and I'd been forced to press the button. I wish migraines tore my head apart every hour of every day so that all I knew, my entire world, was pain. Searing, blistering pain that could never leave, never subside, never die.

I wish food didn't taste good. I wish I were deaf, dumb, and blind, and couldn't even play pinball to while away the time.

I wish I were skydiving, and my chute still hadn't opened, and I was 50 feet from the ground, going 100 miles an hour.

I wish I would walk into my home to find my wife crying on the bed, and find my daughter laid out in the bathroom stained from the cascade of blood coming from her slit wrists.

I wish I were an illiterate old man with asthma, and had to struggle to get the breath to ask what the sign said.

I wish I were drowning.

I wish I were dead.

I just wish I were anything else but a NASCAR fan.