I am nearly certain that the verb to use when you're refering to doubt, hypothesis, wishes, etc. as opposed to things that actually happened is "were." Saying "I wish I was a pirate" makes about as much sense as "I wish I am a pirate;" it's the same thing except in the past tense... and people make the mistake all the time so it doesn't sound as funny as if you was (were) to use "am."

I wouldn't have been so bold as to summarize grammar analysis on your site if you hadn't taken the interest to respond to my initial comment, which didn't contain any such analysis. So don't complain that I'm being verbose or pedantic or something.

However, upon further analysis, I see that you repeated a dumb joke about my name from uh, I think a movie. Touche.

but if you put the stress on the i

i was i was a pirate
rather than i wish i were a pirate.

..

Okay, okay. Now that we have this wrapped up we can move on to "I wish I was a ninja."

Any thoughts?