“Oh, she’s sore from running a half-marathon. She’s training for a whole one.”
“What? That’s crazy!” I gasped.
“I know. I’m soooo jealous,” my friend replied. “Running a marathon used to be on my Bucket List. But now I know it will never happen.”
Huh. Jealous. Jealousy was not remotely the emotion I was feeling. I only want to run a marathon if somone is chasing me with a very sharp object. And yet it’s on her Bucket List. I’ve heard the term ‘Bucket List’ a lot since that movie came out. It’s the list of things you’re supposed to accomplish before you ‘kick the bucket’. Running a marathon seems like one of the things that might actually cause me to kick the bucket. That’s why I developed my own UN-Bucket List-- the much more interesting and practical list of things I want to AVOID doing before I pass on. I immediately put “running a marathon” very close to the top. Right behind ‘Ending up in a Chinese Prison.’ That’s certainly number one.
It takes some real thought to decide what you want to avoid doing before you die. I am very ambitious, so my list of what not to do is quite extensive. There are the obvious things, like “Don’t get hit by a train,” and “Never attend a spin class.” Stuff like that. But recently I went on a campout with some friends and we did one of those drive-through safari things with the kids where you get to feed the animals out of the car window. Well, it was way fun. But there were all these signs: “Don’t feed the Zebras from your hand.” “Watch out for the Zebras.” “Seriously, don’t feed the Zebras, we’re talking to YOU.”
Dang, what did they have against the zebras? Zebras are preciously cute. And they kept coming up to the car and giving me sweet Zebra eyes and resting their chins on the window ledge. So I fed them from my hand. I rubbed them, I nuzzled my face against their cheeks. This freaked my son completely out. “Mom! It says don’t feed the zebras from your hand!”
I’m always pretty sure signs like that are not really talking to me. They mean other people who lack good judgement, and I happened to know how angelic and delightful this particular zebra was. So I told my son to relax, that it was no big deal.
My friend Paula was driving the car, I was in the seat behind her. She saw me repeatedly feeding the zebra from my hand. “Paula, you gotta try this, “I told her. “This guy is too cute!” So I give her some food and she gently lays her hand out to my little friend. CHOMP! The zebra bites down on her hand with a death grip and starts shaking his head furiously back and forth.
“Aaaaahhhh! He has my hand!” Paula screams and tries to pull it out. The zebra is not letting go. I can see the muscles in his jaw clenched. He wants that hand for dessert. I am yelling at him to let go and finally I resort to punching him in the head with as much force as I can muster. If you have never had the opportunity to punch a zebra skull, believe me they are really hard. Mr. Zebra rolls his eyes back to me with a confused, hurt look, like “Why the hell are you hitting me? I thought we had something special.” So did I, Mr. Zebra, so did I. But I punch him in the head again and he finally lets go. Paula has a full set of zebra dental records imprinted across her palm. My son is yelling, “That’s why you’re not supposed to feed them! It said so right on the sign!”
But I barely heard him (or my husband from the back row of seats telling me how I hadn’t hit the zebra hard enough the first time) because my heart was pounding loudly in my ears. I thought that stupid thing was going to rip her hand off. It conjured up the horrible image from that ‘Omen’ movie where the family’s car is attacked by a hoarde of demonic baboons. Eeek! I quickly added “Do not get savagely attacked by a wild animal” to my Un-Bucket list. (This also encompasses the popular “don’t get pecked apart by flock of posessed ravens” and “do not be eaten by a bear while camping”).
Let’s see, what else. Oh yes, there is “Don’t get dragged behind a horse”. I very much would like to avoid that. And “Do not be mistaken for a drug-trafficker and get body-cavity searched at the airport.” Yikes. I’m really going to strive for that one. I also want to accomplish “Don’t get left in shark-infested waters by a Scuba boat.” That’s definitely been a goal of mine since I was a little girl.
Recent events have made me add some more challenging items to my list, like the important, “Do not exploit my children to get a reality TV show,” because that seems to be pretty hard for many people to achieve these days. But I am going to try!
I will accomplish much in my lifetime that I am proud of, and leave behind a legacy of loving family and friends. But most importantly, with any luck, my tombstone will read “Here lies Paige Schlegel-- who did NOT catch a flesh-eating bacteria.”
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