Your bucket list should not bring you closer to the bucket.

by Dan Piraro

Audio produced by Temporary Genius Productions

A lot of people use the term “bucket list” to describe things they want to do before they die. I recently came across an online list of some of the most common items on people’s bucket lists and found some of them to be curious choices if not flirtations with the Grim Bucket itself.

A quick search on the origin of the term “kick the bucket” revealed something surprising, as well.

Since at least the 18th century, the term has been a part of our English vernacular as a euphemism for dying. But what has dying got to do with a bucket and why would we kick it? The etymology is fairly macabre.

In the days before convenient (if not deadly) processed meat, people used to kill and butcher their own animals. There was a wooden contraption of some sort that they’d hang an animal from by its feet while slaughtering it. As it died, the twitches and spasms would make it kick the wooden thing, which for some reason was called “the bucket.” Against all odds, those death throes, and the poor beast’s innards pouring onto the ground, gave birth to a light-hearted phrase that eventually inspired a charming Hollywood buddy comedy. Ah, the strange twists and turns of human civilization.

So people now commonly have “bucket lists”: things they want to do before they die. Here are some common ones according to another dubious twist of civilization, the Internet:

• Skydiving: This is a romantic name for an admittedly questionable activity; jumping out of a fully operational airplane while still in the air. It should be called “fate tempting,” or, at the very least, something more accurate like “dirtdiving” because the sky you’re falling from isn’t the most important element, it’s the planet rushing toward you at 120 mph. As hard as it is to believe, people pay money to put their entire lives and the emotional well-being of everyone who loves them at risk of abruptly ending a few minutes later. To do this is to take everything you’ve learned, achieved, and cherished, as well as all of your hopes and dreams for the future, the lives you may irrevocably change for the better, the cures for terminal diseases you may discover, the hilarious cartoons you may draw, and the children you may have and all that they may contribute to humanity—all of that and more—and trust it to 2.5 lbs of nylon and some string. The only thing I can think of that would be more dangerous would be to dress as a tree and enter a cage full of hungry tigers on the assumption that they will think you are not food.

Bizarro copyright Dan Piraro 2018

Okay, I admit that I did this once (dirtdiving, not pretending to be a tree among carnivores). It’s as scary as having an affair with Taylor Swift would be, knowing that her boyfriend is a 250 lb. NFL tight end. But I’ll never do it again. (Jump out of a plane, not the other thing.) I’ve checked that off my bucket list.

• Visit every continent: This is a pretty popular bucket list item and one I used to fantasize about. But it made more sense before the airline industry was taken over by fear of terrorism and stratospheric greed. I can no longer afford to fly to every continent—I can barely afford to fly from Mexico to Texas anymore—nor am I Buddhist enough to tolerate that many strolls through airport security. If I have to endure one more strip search and a repeat of the baggage X-ray ordeal because I thoughtlessly left half a bottle of water in my backpack, I’m going to switch to traveling by donkey or kayak. If only so many people had not brought down commercial airliners with a couple of mouthfuls of water!

• Climb a mountain, run a marathon, go bungee jumping: These are all the same. If you were the kind of person to do these things, you’d have already done them. If you’re not, you’re probably going to get killed. I recommend watching a few movies about tragic mountain climbing incidents and see if that doesn’t quell your desire to conquer the Himalayas. Then test your marathon suitability by running around the block and seeing if you think you want to do that 894 times without stopping to empty your bladder or colon. Then notice that bungee jumping is the same as dirtdiving, except it is a rubber band and the tensile strength of your spinal cord that stops you from embedding yourself in the ground without a shovel or a coffin.

• Swim with sharks: This is on the list of popular bucket list items I saw and it confounds me. If you’re really planning to swim with sharks, I’d advise that at the very least, you wear a tree costume and hope they cannot smell your edibility.

As for me, I’m not prone to bucket lists and have no burning desire to do something special before my brief residence in this sack of animated meat that people call “Dan” is over. I’m a big believer in the adage, “The way you spend your day is the way you spend your life.” I spend my days writing, drawing, painting, laughing at my stupid dogs, and loving the people in my life. If I can keep doing those things until my consciousness wanders off to another dimension, that’ll be good enough for me. Sharks, tigers, and racing toward the surface of a planet at more than a hundred miles an hour don’t have to be part of it.

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