One day a ship was sailing through the ocean when an almighty storm whipped up.  The storm lashed the ship mercilessly, and as a result of the relentless battering she received she started to break up and sank to the bottom of the ocean.  All but one of the people aboard the ship lost their lives as a result, but the sole survivor managed to grab a lifebelt and eventually washed up on a deserted island.

Having been stranded on the island for about a month, hoping to be rescued by a passing ship, the guy who had survived the sinking was walking along the beach one day when suddenly he tripped over something that had been obscured by the sand.  Suddenly something shiny caught his eye.  The man scraped away at the sand and found a shiny lamp beneath the sand.  It looked a bit dirty in places, so the guy decided to try and buff it up a bit.  As he did so, a mysterious figure appeared before him.

"Who are you?" asked the guy, rather surprised at the figure's sudden appearance.

"I am the genie of the lamp" replied the mysterious looking figure.  "For releasing me from the lamp, I will grant you three wishes."

"Wow, that's great!" said the guy.  "Thanks very much!"

"There is a condition to the wishes that I grant you" replied the genie.  "Whatever you wish for, your wife will get twice as much as you do."

This last comment annoyed the guy no end, as he had been going through an acrimonious divorce before the ship set off.  Thinking carefully about what he wanted to wish for, he replied "First of all, I'd like a decent sized speedboat that could get me off of this island, filled with enough fuel to get me back to my home country so that I can get home again."

"Consider it done" said the genie, and with that a state of the art, top of the range speedboat appeared just off of the island, anchored a short swim away.  "Your wife now has two of these speedboats, as per the condition of the wishes I granted you.  What would you like for your second wish?"

The man thought for a moment, then replied "I'd like a large mansion with a huge driveway and six exotic cars to choose from whenever I decide to go for a drive somewhere."

"Consider it done" said the genie.  "Your second wish has just been granted, but your wife has now got double the amount that you wished for.  Now, what would you like for your third and final wish?"

The man thought carefully about it for a moment, and remembering that his wife had a very weak heart and was in extremely poor health, replied, "For my third and final wish I want you to scare me half to death."