my happy list

Everyone's heard of a bucket list, and many of us have one.  I certainly do.  Up until about four years ago, it was just a mental list that I kept only in my head.  Then I took the time to actually sit down and put it on paper.  

Most of my items ended up being places I wanted to visit instead of things I necessarily wanted to do.  And I'm proud to report that since making my bucket list, I have been lucky enough to check off some of the places.

Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, TX (left); Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West, FL--Ernest Hemingway's hangout (right)

When a movie called The Bucket List was released in 2007, with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, my parents went on a movie date to see it.  That movie impacted Daddy.  As they were driving home, he was deep in thought, and Mom asked him what he was thinking about.  He plainly said he was going to buy a motorcycle.  She thought he and his 135-pound self were playing.  He wasn't playing, and he did.

My parents, the bikerpeople.

A while back, my friend C and I were having one of our rambling conversations when I mentioned something I wanted to put on my bucket list.  I was shocked to find out she didn't have one.  She's such a deep and profound thinker--I just assumed someone like her would have a deep and profound bucket list.  She explained that with so many things that never get marked off, it just makes for disappointment.  Did I mention she's deep and profound?

Well anyway, this got me to thinking.  Why not make a list of all the cool things I've done and accomplished?  I'm not scrapping my list of things I want to do, but I'm instead going to celebrate the things I have already gotten to do.

And so, I present My Happy List, in no particular order or date or importance:

•  I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane when I was 18. 

•  I met Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits at a casino in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  He smiled at me and said, "Hello, love.  Don't I know you?"

•  The very first concert I ever went to was Aerosmith in Atlanta, Georgia.  I was 14.

•  I've been to Alaska twice.

•  I've been within a few feet of John Glenn.

•  I've hugged Charlie Daniels.  He smelled like coffee and had hands as soft as my grandmother's.

•  I've been locked in a tuba case.

•  I've fed a dolphin from my hand.

•  I've been to Walt Disney World.

•  I've seen my own reflection in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and counted the flags around the Washington Monument.

•  I've laid on the beach in Key West in December.

•  I've paid my respects at Elvis Presley's grave at Graceland.

•  I've touched a piece of the World Trade Center, post-9/11.

•  I've witnessed a newborn baby take his first breath.

•  I've been in the room where John Wayne was born.

•  I've been in the room where FDR died.

•  I've seen the outdoor set of the Golden Girls.

•  I've been to the top of the St. Louis arch.

•  I was the proud owner of a dirt bike not all too long ago.  I miss it.

•  I have stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon, speechless.

This will be an ongoing, never-ending list that I will strive to lengthen.  Oh, and don't judge the tuba case accomplishment--you try to fit in one sometime.  Let me know how that goes.