The Bucket Shit-List

I was halfway through a mouthful of Pad Thai when the conversation turned to death.

”I just wonder how things would be if someone actually told her she only had months left. You know, that she really could do whatever she wanted, like eating ice cream everyday.”

We both paused (wilfully ignoring the sensitivities of terminal illness) before turning to the laundry list of crap that we wouldn’t feel obliged to do if we were dying. Never mind the whole Suffering And Mortality Conundrum - what if you could skip filing your taxes (brave), or cancel all your dental checkups (liberating)? And, since we are all technically dying, I went home and looked up what to put on a bucket list.

Bucket lists are strange entities; for a world made up of uniquely weird human beings, you’d expect there to be more variation. Yet, somehow, any moron daft enough to post their 325-item bucket list on the internet inevitably includes the following activities, which can also be found on the lists of approximately 28 million other people:

1. SWIM WITH DOLPHINS

2. GO TO PRAGUE

3. GET MARRIED

4. TAKE A SELFIE AT THE ALTAR

5. POST ENTIRE LIFE ONLINE

Imagine a holiday to Prague where you could get married - then swim with dolphins alongside your brand new spouse - only to drop dead the next day. Wild.

Popularity is understandable; going somewhere just so you can check it off a list is a bit weird. And even stranger is the tendency among young women to name the bucket list goal of ”reach desired weight.” I mean, this is just sad. Imagine being at the funeral of 46 year old Katie, who died tragically and never made it to Machu Picchu - but did, after a large poo aged 34, reach her goal weight of 115lbs.

All of this got me thinking about my own bucket list, which currently has nothing on it (barring goat yoga). I soon, however, found myself thinking about all the crap I would not want to do - particularly the Carpe diem activities that are supposed to be wholesome and life-affirming. And so, after little time and much deliberation when I definitely had better things to do, the Bucket Shit-List was born.

The Bucket Shit-List: what the disparaging cynic will never do in their lifetime

1. Any kind of family road trip

2. Hot yoga

3. Any trip involving possible encounters with large, hairy, or venomous insects

4. Run for more than 20 minutes

5. Try colonic cleansing

6. Own excessive amounts of real estate

7. Any financial activity that may complicate a tax return

8. Golf

9. Take a trip to a Berlin nightclub that ends with someone bleeding from the eyes

10. Fish pedicures

11. Any trip involving long-haul flights in economy class

12. Shamanistic ayahuasca rituals

13. Oysters

14. Any retreat that bans phones or insists on silence

15. Go skinny dipping

16. Try public speaking (to an audience that includes my parents)

17. Visit anywhere that could kill me (eg volcanoes), rendering the list both pointless and useless

18. Camping

19. Organise any sort of event with the neighbours

20. Visit Stoke-on-Trent

If anything is going to remind me to seize the day, it won’t be this. More importantly - what happens when you check all the items off your Pinterest-decorated bucket list - long before you croak? What do you do then?