WHY I DON’T…….

Marcia Kester Doyle

I’ve noticed a growing trend of people my age frantically scrambling to complete a “Bucket List” of things they hope to accomplish before they die.

     “I’m going to climb Mount Everest with nothing but a camera and a granola bar in my pocket!”
     “I’m going to bungee jump off the Empire State Building on New Year’s Eve!”
     “I’m going to break the world’s record by riding on Walt Disney World’s Space Mountain for ninety days straight until I’m diagnosed with vertigo!”
      No thanks. I’m pretty content with all the things I’ve seen and done in my lifetime. I have a husband, four great kids, ten pets and an endless supply of chocolate biscotti and some mediocre wine. What more could a girl ask for? I have everything that I need, but there’s also such a thing called a “Reverse Bucket List” that I can easily fulfill. This includes things that I hope NEVER to accomplish. Maybe I’ve become jaded with age…a bit cynical and crabby at times (blame it on menopause), but one thing is certain; I know what I DON’T want to do with the rest of my life. Whether it’s out of fear or self-preservation, it doesn’t matter because the things on my Reverse Bucket List are not going to happen (unless aliens replace me with a look-alike pod person who will confuse my family and friends with a sudden desire to skydive from a burning airplane onto a massive ocean liner in the middle of the Devil’s Triangle). I have valid reasons for not wanting to do certain things, which absolutely justify my paranoid tendencies.

 

WHY I DON’T…
FLY:   No amount of cocktail peanuts or vodka martinis is going to get me up in the sky. I’m a sucker for all of those airplane crash documentaries, and there hasn’t been a tranquilizer invented yet that’s going to erase those images from my brain. Honestly, if God intended for us to fly, we would have sprouted fuzzy, gray wings  at birth and flown the coop before our first tooth came in.

 

EAT WEIRD FOOD:   Like escargot, caviar, raw oysters and frog’s legs…because they’re chewy, fishy, slimy and I can’t bear to think of all the paraplegic frogs out there bound to wheelchairs.

 

GROCERY SHOP:   Dangerous territory for me. I would spend way too many hours trolling the bakery aisle, and I don’t think my family would appreciate it if three-fourths of our grocery budget was blown on cheese danish and banana cream pie.

 

TAKE A VACATION ON A CRUISE SHIP:   I have one word for you: TITANIC.

 

POKE A COBWEB:   Spiders are smart. They’re never around when you mess with their webs, but in reality they’re lurking close by, sizing you up, figuring out how much sticky thread they’ll need to produce in order to wrap you up tighter than an Egyptian mummy.

 

ROLLER BLADE:   There’s no way those little wheels are going to support my weight rolling down the pavement at 50 mph. I can think of better ways to spend my time than in an emergency room with a fractured elbow and watching reruns of The Simpsons on the hospital television.

 

DRIVE ON MAJOR INTERSTATES:   Because everyone here drives like they’re Mario Andretti, pumped up on amphetamines and late for their weekly anger management therapy.

 

KILL COCKROACHES:    As gross as these bugs are, the stuff that comes out of them when you squish them is even more disgusting. I prefer to spray them with poison until until they become a new breed known as “white albino cockroaches”. There’s also this little thing called karma…and the last thing I want to do is return to this world as a bottom feeder waiting to be snuffed out under the heel of someone’s shoe.

 

GIVE UP SUGAR:   Are you serious? Anything worth eating has sugar in it, calories be damned!

 

WATCH HORROR MOVIES:    When I was a teenager, it took me months to forget the image of the demon possessed, head-spinning Linda Blair in the Exorcist. Then came Poltergeist, and I didn’t sleep for a month after seeing it, convinced that my house had been constructed over a sacred Native American Indian burial ground. It was only a matter of time before those Indians were coming back to haunt me and reclaim their land. Nor was I keen on getting sucked into the television set by demonic spirits.
     For years I lived blissfully ignorant of anything frightening at the movie theaters, until my kids convinced me to watch The Ring. They assured me it was not at all scary, and being the naive parent that I obviously am, I agreed to watch the movie and settled in with a bucket of popcorn in one hand and a soda in the other.
     Stupid me. I spent the entire two hours of the show curled up in the fetal position and silently cursing my wicked children for tricking me into watching the scariest movie I had ever seen in my life! Oh sure, I could have left the room or covered my eyes, but who does that? Okay, so I did cover my eyes, but I couldn’t stop peeking through my fingers at the screen.
     And I wish that I hadn’t, because I spent WEEKS sitting up in bed at night, just waiting for a creepy girl with stringy, black hair to come crawling out of my television set. That movie was my introduction to the true meaning of insomnia.

 

WHITE WATER RAFTING:   Flying down a rapid river at break neck speeds in a rubber boat with my ass scraping over rocks is not my idea of fun.

 

WATCH NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SPECIALS:   Although they’re educational, I’m not into watching polar bears tearing apart seals, or jaguars tackling baby deer for a midday snack.

 

GIVE PUBLIC SPEECHES:    I’m convinced that everyone is staring at the nervous outbreak of pimples on my chin or the microscopic spot of butter on my blouse from last night’s lobster fest. My tongue turns into sand paper when I look at the audience and my words come out in an endless stream of nonsensical junk.

 

WEAR A BATHING SUIT IN PUBLIC:   I might be mistaken for a beached whale and get tossed back into the ocean.

 

My Bucket List? Just getting through the day without crossing paths with a colony of cockroaches (or angry Indian spirits and creepy girls stuck in television sets). But I wouldn’t mind sitting back with a glass of mediocre wine and watching some fool strap on a bungee cord for a courageous leap into the unknown.
Share this Post:

37 thoughts on “WHY I DON’T…….”

  7. This is one of the best posts that I have read which you have written. Your creativity and writing are brilliant. You are truly a gifted writer.

  8. Really funny post – great stuff, Marcia.

    If I didn’t know you better, I’d conclude you are a tad neurotic! After saying that, I’m with you on the weird food, white-water rafting and roller-skating.

  10. Well did you ever hear a spiderweb could stop a plane? I wouldn’t go on a crusie either, but it’s not so much Titanic, especially this day and age. It’s more Norovirus.

  11. L O Freaking L!

    Quite a few of these I would never do (or eat for that matter) as well. I like to live a little dangerously but not so much that I crap my pants or need a therapist afterward. My ex-husband tried to get me into horror movies and I just ended up scared crapless for weeks. No thanks!

    1. I never understand why people try to force us to watch Horror movies. No means NO! After seeing the RING, I will never, ever give into pressure to watch anything remotely scary again. I’m more of a comedy/romance kind of gal—because at least I know I’ll be able to sleep at night!

  12. I don’t watch horror movies anymore. I’m not big on wearing swimsuits in public (I’m not a beach person, anyway). I don’t plan to roller blade EVER. And I’m not a big fan of cruise ships, but have taken them where the on-board activities are interesting). But I can’t agree with the rest of your list.

  13. Cockroaches. I can’t get past that awful crunch when you kill them. I’ve been known to put a glass jar over a Palmetto bug and wait till a braver person than I comes over. Or, if I feel really brave, slip a cardboard sheet, hard of course, underneath it with jar on top and take outside. Shudder.

    1. Nooooooo I can’t even do that. I can only spray them from a distance, then throw a paper towel over them in the hopes that someone else will pick it up. I can’t even pick up a dead one without feeling physically ill.

  14. I learned not to spray spiders with bug-spray because once I tried that on a MONSTER spider. It went all jerky and shaky and white-fuzzy-freaky and then split it’s skin and A BIGGER ONE CRAWLED OUT FROM INSIDE!

    So I hit the fucker with a shovel.

    I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s too much of a scaredy-cat for horror films. I just…can’t! I quake at the thought.

  17. OH my gosh. So many of these I can relate to, especially the spiders, cruise ships, and horror movie thing.

    I have never gotten over seeing The Grudge several years ago, and so I always see her face on the side of my bed at night when I’m trying to sleep. What am I…5!!!

    I recently did make a bucket list though. I’m aiming high with mine; it includes meet and befriend Big Foot and get hammered with Georgio Tsoukalos. I wish you luck in your…lack of experiences I guess you’d say!

  18. That was fun! I agree with you on many, particularly the cruise ship thing. Although…I’ve never been on one but cruises have never appealed to me.

    1. Nowadays all the cruise ships that leave the port near where I live seem to return early with very sick passengers. Seeing that just convinced me I was right not to want to board one!

Comments are closed.