Oh, potato famine! What a curse!

Just when I'm all nice and comfy in my cozy bottle, it comes. It is the calling — the name I gave to this fantastic feeling I often get. After being in the genie business for a thousand years, I know a calling when I feel one.

Boy, this one was gonna be serious, too. It wasn't a run-of-the-mill, make-me-rich calling, mind you. It was one of those aching kinds. It had to come from someone who really needed me. After all, I had gone into genie semiretirement. I was trying not to take the totally tough assignments anymore. I mean, I've been doing this for a whole millenium, so I thought I could take some time off. But that was before this girl, whose name I don't even know yet, started having this huge personal crisis. I mean, she was in some pretty sad shape! I hadn't felt such intense personal suffering since a little girl named Joan (you know, of Arc) called me, like, almost six hundred years ago. Or was it in the thirteen hundreds? Oh, I don't know — the years become a blur if I think about them too hard.

When the calling comes on, it's so strong that I can never resist it, even if I want to. It's part of a genie's nature, I guess. We genies like to think we can make the world an easier, kinder place for humans. After all, we were once mere mortals, too. So when someone needs me, I go. Pain pulls me forward. Heartbreak is like a magnet.