You know the Bucket List? The list everyone is supposed to make of all the things they want to do before they die. Where did this name come from? I’m guessing the concept is a combination of the Honey-Do List (things we want someone else to do before we kill them) and the rather odd euphemism for dying: Kick the Bucket. This is purely speculative on my part.
I’m uncertain of the origin of kick the bucket. Maybe Shakespeare?
Swifter then he that gibbets on the Brewers Bucket. [to gibbet meant to hang] ~ William Shakespeare, Henry IV
Anyway, I recently read about a guy who just marked the last thing – number 1000! – off his bucket list. At 28, his life is fulfilled… But that’s not my point.
It started me thinking. People are always sharing their bucket lists – some are empty of all but wishful thinking and some are so full they’ve had to switch to a barrel.
But, how often are we really honest about our Un-Bucket list? That list we all have of things that we’ve done that we’d hoped we’d never do, or at least, that we’re surprised we’ve done, and we’re not even dead yet.
In a spirit of light-heartedness and minimal self-revelation, I’m sharing my list (this may require additional posts at some point). Keeping it simple, this list is composed entirely of things I never thought I’d do as recently as just one year ago:
1. Go to jail to get finger-printed
2. Become a Gate Guard in Texas
3. Consider my new single-ply toilet paper to be thick and luxurious
4. Kill spiders with my naked fingers (being very arachnophobic, I usually just do this when I mistake them for the beetles that drop down from the ceiling into my shirt)
5. Rip off my shirt (hoping no one comes to the gate right at that moment), throw it on the floor and stomp on it to kill the odd array of bugs who’ve begun co-habitating with me
6. Eat breakfast at 11 at night while watching Good Morning America
7. Talk to the animals in Doolittle fashion: buzzards, cows, armadillos, donkeys, raccoons etc…
9. Live someplace where we’re all speaking English but between the drawl and the chew, I still have no idea what is being said and hope that smiling and nodding is universally appropriate
10. Remove drowned cockroaches from my freshly washed towels
11. Discover I’m a random dyslexic
12. Put Tabasco on my french fries because Sonic Burger (forget McDonald’s), doesn’t have ketchup
13. Quickly forget Sonic Burger and realize that, in small towns, all fast food is requires hot sauce
14. Throw bowls of water on calves who eat my satellite cables, wheel covers, septic hose etc…
15. Recognize people by their license plates and their tattoos
16. Deem any temperature with less than 3 digits, quite comfortable
17. Consider creating caliche art
18. Play Angry Birds on my phone at 4 a.m. while listening to, but not watching, re-runs of Cheers, which I like simply for the theme song
19. Take a shower 7 3 times a week because it takes 2 days in-between to recover from the 2nd degree burns caused by the perpetually hot water
20. Make people spell four letter words for me like TOOL and CAN’T because I think they’re saying TOE and CAINED
That’s just the tip of the bucket. I’ll add another 20 some other day. Until then…
The driver’s lament: The sun has riz, the sun has set, and here I is, in Texas yet.