The Reverse Bucket List

I have a confession.

The term “Bucket List” makes me want to scratch something.  Like the face of the person who talks about what’s on their bucket list.

It’s the term: Bucket List.  I know it’s the title of a movie, one which I have never seen, but when I think bucket, I think puke, or mopping floors, or slop bucket, or feeding pigs.  Or another phrase that rhymes with bucket that I sometimes say aloud but not on my blog and I squirm when I think of my kids saying it to me.  And it would only be my fault because they have heard this word escape from my mouth more than once or twenty times.

Where were we?

Oh, yes.  The make me puke list.  All the things you want to do before you die.  Hang glide, see the pyramids, adopt a child, win an Academy Award, hang out with the POTUS for a day, be on Saturday Night Live in the 70s, own all the shoes and bags, blink my eyes and be in Paris, be Beyoncé, fly through the air using only my arms.

These are the things I want to do.  If I had one, these things would be on my bucket list.

Recently some friends wrote about their Reverse Bucket List (see here and here).  I was excited.  I thought: well, now, this is a concept I can really get behind.  A reverse bucket list must be a list of things not that you want to do, but that you don’t ever want to do.  There are a ton more things I want NOT to do in this world than things I want to do.

Be trampled by a bull, survive a shipwreck, fall and break my nose, go white water rafting, camp in a tent, be attacked by a bear, go to a college football game, be abducted by aliens, get the flu, cut my nails too short, have this pain in my neck for the rest of my life.

I could go on and on.

Find myself in a fistfight, lose my purse, forget to turn the iron off when I leave the house, think about all my fingernails and toenails falling off, watch The Island of Dr. Moreau again, travel to Antarctica, touch a frog, drink lemonade and find out it was someone’s pee.

Sadly I learned that the concept of a reverse bucket list is not this at all.  The Reverse Bucket List is this: a list of all the things that you have done.  Your accomplishments.  I should have known this: my friends are awesome and have accomplished much.

So, sigh.  My accomplishments.  This is hard.  I am an embarrassingly modest person.  Not a horn-tooter.  It might be good for me to list all the things I have done, but it makes me cringe-y to think about them in terms of accomplishments.  This probably says more about me than any of my accomplishments would.  It probably says that I am destined to be a big loser.

Screw that.

Let's go.

My Reverse Bucket List

1.  I am a master at making a fool of myself in nearly any situation.

2.  Once I was making faces and trying to be witty and slipped on some ice and fell into a snowbank.

3.  I have worn four or five of the world's worst haircuts.

4.  Despite having loads of time and many ways to keep in touch with friends and family members, I don’t call, write, email, or text.

5.  I have made every person in my family cry.

6.  I fell backwards off a high stool while wearing a short dress at a wedding.

7.  I have learned the art of starting awkward conversations.

8.  On a regular basis I wave at someone or say “HI!” before I realize that I have no idea who they are.  Relatedly, I ask someone a question and they don’t realize I’m talking to them. 

9.  I am the queen of high fives left hanging.

10.  I can always pick out the one guy in a bar who will hit on me.  It is always the drunkest, oldest, smelliest guy in the room.  Also my husband.

So there you have it:  My Reverse Bucket List.  Huh.  That actually felt pretty good.  Not cringe-y at all.

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