In My Next Life by Connie Wolf

In my next life, my brother will be born first. My mother will long for a girl and when I am born, two years after my brother; my parents will weep with joy. In my next life, my brother will gently tease me but protect me fiercely from anyone else who might dare to try it. He will be handsome, intelligent and wildly popular. When I’m old enough to date I’ll have my choice of all his handsome, intelligent wildly popular friends. All of them have a crush on me because I’m graceful and small with a bubbly personality and infectious laugh. In my next life I have green eyes with perfect 20/20 vision and naturally curly hair. I ace all of my classes with very little effort and make friends with everyone I meet because of my charm, beauty, intelligence, talent, humor and unadulterated humility. In my next life my father will be an inventor. He will have invented all things technical, all things digital, and all global communications. We will be insanely wealthy and he will retire at 30 to concentrate on curing cancer and global warming. Except for this difference in the realm of career and personal wealth, he will be still my Dad, the one I had in this life. Only in my next life he will never have an aneurism or brain stem stroke and his memory will remain razor sharp throughout his long and healthy life. In my next life my mother will be my very best friend and as she ages all of her wrinkles will be laugh lines. She will smile every day and be known for her quiet wisdom and loving ways. Her humor will always be self-effacing and her kindness, world renown. In my next life my Mom will hug me every day and we’ll go shopping at least one day each week. We will laugh together and I’ll be able to trust her with all of my secrets. In my next life all of my secrets will be light and silly, all of my tears will be in empathy and I will always cry when it is appropriate. I will cry prettily when other people are present; just one tear from my eye will break the world’s collective heart. Once a month I’ll cry in earnest, these will be private, cleansing tears that clear the sinuses and lighten the heart. This is for medicinal purposes only because in my next life I will have absolutely nothing to be sad about. In my next life I will marry only once, he will be the one and only love of my life. We will meet at just the right time and marry at just the right age. We will actually live “Happily Ever After”. Oh, of course, he will sometimes get exasperated with me. After all, it isn’t easy to live with all this perfection but all I’ll have to do is pout adorably and smile my dimpled smile and he will melt and open His arms to me. No way, he will ever be able to resist my smile. In my next life, we will have two perfect children, first a boy and then a girl. They will fill our lives with joy and laughter. As babies, they will sleep through the night right from birth. They will never be cranky, they will never catch cold, never ever throw up or get diarrhea and they will potty train themselves just to please me. Pleasing me will be their hearts desire and their only goal in life. In my next life I will have a beautiful singing voice and will sing solos in the church choir. I will write best sellers in my spare time and will go on Dancing with the Stars and win by a landslide but only after I have been retired as the number one all time champion of Jeopardy. Alex Trebek is, of course, secretly in love with me. In my next life I will be a gourmet cook and will visit the culinary capitols of the world. I will eat and enjoy rich foods but never gain an ounce. I will be dead center on all height and weight charts and will never exercise unless it is fun because I just don’t have to, not even as I slip with graceful poise into my golden years. In my next life I will never catch cold or get the flu and I’ll never have an allergic reaction to anything. I will never have to take medication, not ever. My blood pressure will be perfection itself and my cholesterol levels with be the ideal that all others are measured by. In this life I’m pretty sure my death will be painful, undignified and terribly inconvenient. I imagine that it will happen in a very public place like the middle of Sunday morning church or in the produce aisle of Trader Joes. My face will probably be contorted in pain, I’ll lie in pools of odorous body fluids and small children will see me in their nightmares for years to come. But in my next life even my death will be pretty. I will lie on my pillow top feather mattress in a lovely new nightie, my silver curls tied up with a matching satin ribbon. My nails will be freshly manicured and no dry skin will be evident on my elbows or heels. I will simply slip away in the night with just the slightest hint of a smile on my lips. In my next life………