Do you believe? In particular, do you believe in wishes? If you do, you may pick up some tips from today’s puzzle. The theme answer is MAKE A WISH, and it has five things you are supposed to make a wish on, several of which are new to me. SHOOTING STAR and LADYBUG are the ones I know. Did you know there are male ladybugs? They are a little smaller than the female, and, I would guess, are pretty insecure. This one’s not male.

Then there is DANDELION – that stuff you blow off, right? But they also included ELEVEN ELEVEN — when you see it on a clock — and EYE LASH. If you see that an eyelash has fallen onto a face, or somewhere, you are supposed to wish upon it too.

The superstition that compels us to wish on otherwise random objects dates back at least a couple of centuries. Several versions of eyelash wishing existed in 18th century Britain and Ireland. For example, folklore recorded in Shropshire, England, instructs that if “an eyelash comes out, put it on the back of the hand, wish, and throw it over the shoulder. If it leaves the hand, the wish will come true.”

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Fans of the TV show “24” know all about ELISHA Cuthbert (who was in the puzzle today at 44A) as no less than Jack Bauer’s daughter. She was born in Calgary and will turn 41 later this month. She’s a big ice hockey fan which is good because she married Dion Phaneuf, a former captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs. They have two children, a daughter born in 2017 and a son in 2022.

Maxim named her the sexiest woman in television in 2013 and she generally does very well in “sexiest women” lists. She must have been especially sexy in 2013, because GQ also named her one of the hottest women of the 21st century that year.

Here she is, as bright as the sun, with all of her eyelashes in place.

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Happy Birthday to writer/humorist P.J. O’Rourke, who was born on this date in 1947 in Toledo, Ohio, and passed away on Feb. 15, 2022, in Sharon, NH.

Here’s one of his quotes: “Drugs have taught an entire generation of kids the metric system.”

And this paragraph which he wrote was shared today in The Writer’s Almanac. As far as I’m concerned, it’s perfect.

“The source of the word ‘humorist’ is one who regards human beings in terms of their humors — you know, whether they’re sanguine or full of yellow bile, or whatever the four classical humors are. You stand back from people and regard them as types. And one finds, especially by the time one reaches one’s fifties, that there are a limited number of types of people in the world, and you went to high school with every single one of them. You can visit the Eskimos, you can visit the Bushmen in the Kalahari, you can go to Israel, you can go to Egypt, but everybody you meet is going to be somebody you went to high school with.”

You get the last word today, PJ. See you tomorrow everybody. Thanks for popping by.