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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The un-bucket list

The concept of compiling lists of things we want to do before we kick the bucket has gotten a fair amount of publicity recently. There was even a movie by that title which came out a couple years ago.

Most people have lists which include things like, visit Nepal, or learn to fly an airplane, or make love to so-and-so, or shoot a hole-in-one.

I have a similar list: Things I ought to do, but realistically speaking, know I will never do before I die. It includes:

Read the collected works of Shakespeare and really appreciate him. (It's such a pain to go down to the bottom of the page to find out what all those words mean.)

Read the Bible. (Put me in a prison cell with nothing to read but the St. James version, and even then I might not make much progress. Of course, in those circumstances I might actually need to be born again.)

Re-read my calculus textbook so as to once again appreciate the elegance of higher math and marvel at the intelligence of whoever first came up with those theorems. (But the internet and Page Six beckon....)

Take up a new sport, like skiing. (Too much energy.)

Learn a foreign language. (I actually took Spanish for three whole weeks after returning from Spain in 1999, but then realized I would never spend enough time in Spain to make it worthwhile.)

See a sasquatch in person. (I've spent enough time tramping around in the woods searching for the Big Fella to know that the Native Americans are right; you'll only see him when he wants to let you, not when you want to see him.)

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