It’s the Pitts: My Empty Bucket List

People have been making up their own bucket lists ever since the movie of the same name starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson came out. One may recall it was about two old geezers who made a list of things they wanted to do before they “kicked the bucket.” 

My own bucket list is empty, as I’ve already done most of the things people seem to want to do. So what I’ve done is create my own “empty bucket” list of the top 10 places I wouldn’t want to be caught dead.

10 and 9. I don’t want to go to Mexico (number 10) to see a bull fight (number nine). 

First of all, I simply don’t want to go to Mexico for health reasons. Over 40 years ago, we’d cross the border frequently with a friend at Nogales to eat Mexican food at a restaurant there. It was good food and good fun, and we didn’t feel any danger. 

Do the same thing now and one will end up in a Mexican jail or a morgue. Also, it’s a good bet their car or truck will be impounded, and the next time they go to Mexico, they might see their vehicle being used as a cop car, as they get second pick after the drug dealers.

As for watching a bullfight, I can’t think of a more gory display of man’s violent tendencies than watching a bull being killed slowly and ruthlessly for no good reason. I like cattle way too much to take pleasure in watching them experience such an atrocious death.

8. I definitely don’t want to be incarcerated in a rest home when I become totally worthless to society. 

Instead, I’d rather commit a felony and go to prison for life. Going to prison will save $5,000 a month, the food is usually better, I have a better chance of getting my own private room and I would get better medical care for free with my own concierge doctor.

7. Another place high on my empty bucket list of places I’d least like to go to is the hospital. 

As if it isn’t painful enough to be cut open from stem to stern, the medical masochists then put patients in a room for a week with three other occupants – a Valley girl who is often visited by a gang of giggling girlfriends, a middle-aged woman who insists on taking command of the TV remote control and an old guy who snores so loud he sounds like a cheap chainsaw.

6. High on my list of things I do not want to do is attend a family reunion where I get stuck reminiscing about the good old days with the in-laws of my second cousin who I’ve never met before.

5. I hope I never add to my motel stationery collection by spending one more night in a hotel or motel. I lived out of a suitcase for 40 years, acquiring motel and hotel points  but this is not all I acquired. I also got a bad back from sleeping in bad beds and a fear of bed bugs.

4. If I lived in “tornado alley” in Oklahoma, I’d migrate to California too like depression-era Okies did because all the prunies have is earthquakes. 

I tried to outrun a tornado in Oklahoma once, and if I had to do it on a regular basis I’d either end up in the nuthouse or AA.

3. I haven’t been in an airport for five years now, and I hope I never will. Enough said.

2. I’ve never been afraid of an upcoming operation, but I dread a visit to the dentist worse than death itself. 

I’ve had 13 teeth pulled and replaced with implants, and every time I visit the dentist, I fear a masked man is going to steal all of my money, disfigure my face – even worse than it already is – and leave me for dead without any painkillers.

1. I guarantee one will never hear about me running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. I’ve been running from bulls ever since I was 15 and worked on a ranch with a particularly nasty strain of man-eating bovines. 

If I wanted to be shish-kabobbed and perforated by a bovine, I can do it at home without getting on an airplane and staying in high-priced hotels.