Question

Insert the correct verb? I wish I (had had/have had/would have/could have) my helmet when I fell off the bike.

Answer 1

had had

Explanation:

We have the following options:

1. I wish I had had my helmet when I fell off the bike.
2. I wish I have had my helmet when I fell off the bike.
3. I wish I would have my helmet when I fell off the bike.
4. I wish I could have my helmet when I fell off the bike.

Before we run through the options, let's first take a look at what the rest of the sentence. We have something that happened in the past ("fell off the bike") and we're expressing a wish we'd had a helmet.

Let's run through the options.

Option 1 is Past Perfect tense, which is a tense that expresses an action in the past for a period of time that also ends in the past. This tense works for us because the wish is extended into the past (the time before the fall) and ends with the fall off the bike.

Option 2 is Present Perfect tense, which is also a tense that expresses an action in the past but which ends in the present moment. This one doesn't work since the wish ends with the fall that occurred in the past.

Options 3 and 4 are Conditional verbs in Present tense. Since the accident happened in the past, these tenses don't make sense (if these were in some sort of Past tense, they could have worked), such as:

1. I wish I would have had my helmet when I fell off the bike.
2. I wish I could have had my helmet when I fell off the bike.