Did the term “bucket list” become popular because of that wonderful 2007 movie called “The Bucket List” with those two charmers Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson? No, but that film brought the expression into today’s vernacular. It stems from the phrase “kick the bucket,” which means to die, so it easily goes from that to one’s making a bucket list; in other words, fulfilling one’s wishes before one shuffles off, or kicks the bucket, and oh my, the derivation of that phrase is gruesome; it has to do with either killing one’s self, the slaughtering of a pig, or pitching holy water from a bucket onto a deceased person. Eeuuw.
Anyway, I now have my own bucket list which is what I suspect most folks in their eighth decade do. And one of the things in it is that I absolutely positively have no wish to ever jump out of an airplane, even with a seriously ripped young Adonis strapped tightly to my back. If I have a yen to see the world from five miles up, I’ll do it from a nice safe airplane, first class section if at all possible. (That’s another thing on my bucket list, flying first class to anywhere.)
I also have no bucket list yen to swim with sharks. Why do people do that? And why are they so shocked when one of them swims up close and takes a really big taste out of them? We do not belong on their turf. Would we enjoy it if one of them wandered into our living room right in the middle of our favorite favorite TV show? I do not think so.
It’s interesting isn’t it, how once we’ve put that bucket list in place, things gradually keep floating to the top and flying out of it like great life bubbles, shiny flying orbs crammed with stuff we want to do, and of course ready to pop and vanish in a nano. Life bubbles will do that, you know. However, I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours, OK?
I want to fly around the country in a dirigible, not the one with “Good Year” painted on the side. Just a plain one, but I am a bit concerned about how one gets into and out of those things, considering at my advanced age I have problems getting into and out of and up from and down from most everything today. Are there ropes and ladders involved? Then that part of my Bucket List may have to be scratched.
My list says I want to own a 2-year-old, housebroken PomChi. Do you know what that is? It’s a combo Pomeranian and Chihuahua pooch. I met one once about 20 years ago and it was the sweetest animal I’ve ever known and I put it into my bucket that one day I’ll own one, but I won’t get one unless and until “Mongo” runs off with a floozy and I feel quite strongly he won’t be doing that anytime soon. Or ever. I’ll probably name my PomChi “Floozy.” Of course that is if it’s a girl PomChi. If it’s a boy? Well then “Oliver” will do nicely. Maybe I’d better get two. Although as I think about it, maybe at my age, nearly 87, it would be a huge PITA for my relatives to have to deal with a couple of dogs because I’ve gone toes-up. There’s enough to do at that point. No, that would not be a great legacy. I’d best not. I’d better scratch that off my bucket list too.
My bucket list also has in it a wish to paint a mural on our living room wall, one so fabulous that when the house sells and the new owners redecorate, they leave it alone and charge the public huge fees to walk through the place to view it, and when they do they’ll of course be moved to tears. Or gasps. Gasps are good.
My bucket list has me jetting to New Zealand, and the Scandinavian countries, Greenland, Montana, maybe even Russia. Lithuania. Alaska. Lots of other places, but as I think about that, I have to remember that I really really hate to travel and I really really love to stay home, and especially in Maine. OK then, scratch that one too.
On that list inside of my bucket it says how much I’d love to be standing wherever it is that those millions of monarch butterflies let go of their trees and begin their long, long journey. I’d want to feel and hear their wings as they fly past me and off to their destinations thousands of miles away.
My list bubbling out of that Bucket includes a wish to put my hands on the back of a blue whale, to look into the sweet faces of a porcupine and a skunk, to become BFF with a kind, old unangry elephant.
My bucket list says that I want to stand for as long as I wish to stare at all the ancient cave drawings and paintings all over the world. That list includes a burning wish to discover how all the Stonehenges around the world got those massive stone creations to be where they are. And why. My Bucket List tells me that I personally want to see to it that every child and every helpless person and every animal on the planet from this moment on will never again be cold or hungry or hurt. My bucket list is putting me in charge of ending all wars everywhere and forever. It’s written on that list that I get to meet our great grandchildren and that they can know and speak to us, and that we can see and hear them and speak back. My bucket list in BIG letters tells me that before I go I learn to stop shooting off my mouth and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and to never hurt, dismay or confuse another living soul because I did not think before I spoke. My bucket list says that it’s important I meet Tom Selleck and George Clooney and Ella and Mel and poets — well, you know, guys like that, and that we become close friends for life and they come over a lot. My bucket list says that I want to do interviews on the radio again and that every single person I invite onto the show says yes most eagerly. And speaking of radio, my Bucket List bubble says I want to learn how to write dramas for that medium and that people will crowd around their radios to listen to my stories the way we all did back in the days of Marconi.
Down at the very bottom of my Bucket List there are the words “Learn to tap dance, learn to ski, learn to dance like the kids do today, learn Italian, learn to cook well, get skinny, buy an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini and wear it proudly, learn to play the piano and play ragtime, jazz, boogie woogie and all the songs of all the composers until the 1950s, learn to dress with stunning style,” …oh my, that’s a long list down there on the dark bottom of my bucket, very very long. I can hardly see it. There’s one word on that list at its very end that I can actually see, and it says NO! But the other things? I still have time, right?
Oh well, as you can see, even though its filled with far more wishes, my bucket list isn’t such a big deal. There are small things in it, important only to me things, not many change the world things. I dream about them sometimes, but as we all know, dreams, like bubbles, pop away and are forgotten when the mornings come. If all of these things and the others I haven’t written about here never happen, it won’t be much of a loss to me because you see, get ready to gag and groan folks, wait for it!
My Bucket already runneth over.
LC Van Savage is a Brunswick writer.