After Almost Kicking the Bucket, I Wrote My Anti-Bucket List

First off, let me confess that my 2016 was what fans of children’s literature call a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. I lost a job I’d had for 34 years. (New investors took over and rewarded loyalty the way a Real Housewife keeps an ugly secret about a fellow Housewife.) And before I could start the “fun with severance” part of my life, I was diagnosed with cancer — the bad kind. It was a bit touch and go, and I was MIA from social activities for about a year. But things worked out, and I rejoined the world with some severance left.

My reception by the denizens of my old life was joyful yet annoying. They were happy to see me, but they expected that my year of uncertainty would have blessed me with something every retiree is somehow obligated to have: a bucket list. Given the wisdom my friends assumed I’d gained from a serious illness, they wanted to know how I would “make the most of my life,” what wonderful adventures lay ahead, what far-flung country was next on my list, what mountain I wanted to climb.

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I hadn’t been a shut-in previously — I once got shot with a rubber bullet during a riot, went to the Oscars and had other mild adventures in my life. But that was the past. It was more important to my friends that I embrace the future, maybe with a new electric bicycle.

“Do you realize what you’ll learn about yourself jumping out of an airplane?” one friend insisted. “Swimming with the sharks changed my life,” said another. “Don’t you want to face your fears?”

I’m pretty sure that “adventures” conducted by a heavily insured company with a paid chaperone are less about facing your fears and more about getting shark selfies. And anyone who learns something about themselves while strapped to a pro skydiver and landing in an empty field probably didn’t know much to begin with.