There's a great movie called The Bucket List and before I saw that (years ago) I only had a vague idea of what a "bucket list" is, and although it's a terrific movie it didn't make me want to run out and write a bucket list.
Most bucket lists have things like "travel to Europe" or "skydive" or "meet the pope," etc.
My bucket list is completely different. First of all, travel is not all it's cracked up to be. I cannot imagine anything that would entice me to sit on an airplane for hours, stuck in a big metal tube in the sky, in close proximity to a hundred strangers, exposed to their coughs and farts and sharing a tiny bathroom with all of them. BTDT when I went to Russia 4 times and Kazakhstan 2 times between 2003 and 2007. I am not scared to fly, but I hate flying because I hate crowds.
For the record, I hated crowds before Covid but I now utterly loathe crowds and I will never willingly expose myself to them. No game, concert, or church service will ever entice me to be around crowds.I am a homebody, and that's not uncommon for folks my age.
My son and I had a very late lunch yesterday at Honeybaked Ham and there were no other people in the store as customers, and just 2 guys behind the counter. It was lovely.
I will never willingly skydive. Somebody very big and strong, holding a gun, would be necessary before I would jump out of an airborne airplane and even then I would hesitate. I fear no diaper would save me from the dire consequences of that jump, because unlike lighter people my fat ass would plummet me straight to the ground long before the parachute would open. The mess would be terrible, unless I was dropped into the ocean.
No, my bucket list will likely have to wait for some scientific breakthroughs or a resurgence of elemental magic before it will ever be possible, any of it. It's below, in no particular order.
1) time travel to 1978 and leave a note for my high school self saying "give up all carbs forever and join a gym asap and workout every.single.day"
2) have a nice long lunch with Tom Hanks
3) move into my own house which has a screened-in back porch and sits on at least two acres
4) spend the day with all of my Thompson first cousins and their families, just eating and chilling out and visiting
5) spend the day with all of my Hasty first cousins and their families, just eating and chilling out and visiting
6) eat a big piece of chocolate cheesecake with no gastric consequences
7) spend a week at the beach, slightly off season like maybe in September, with my kids and my best friends, all in one big house with a pool
8) have a weekend visit with my only sibling, who hasn't visited me in years
9) time travel back to 1957, to just after my parents get married, and tell my parents to get some counseling
10) time travel back to 1970 so I can talk to my grandfather (Bob Hasty) and ask him to tell me about the scandal that cost him his major league baseball career. [I tried to write a book about it, a novel, Return to Marietta, but it didn't sell]
11) eat a nice long lunch with my favorite singer, Mary Chapin Carpenter
12) have some private lessons with the Dalai Llama on meditation and inner peace
13) write a bestselling novel
14) spend a few days in the mountains of East Tennessee during the Fall, with one of my friends and no crowds [this is the most farfetched of all my list items!]
15) travel across Canada, through the Canadian Rockies, by train
I just re-read my list and realized a lot of the items have to do with spending time with family and friends. I think at the end of my life that's what I will regret most, not spending more time with family and friends.
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