What’s On Your Bucket List?

You know what a bucket list is, right?

 

A bucket list is a list of things a person wants to do before they “kick the bucket.”

 

Wanna hear something wild and crazy?

 

This year alone, three people have told me I’m on their bucket list!

 

You’d think that would stroke my ego so hard I’d burst into flame, right?

 

HAH!!!

 

What it does … is scare me spit-less.

 

There is no way I could ever live up to anyone who has me on their bucket list.

 

I’m just a regular person.

 

I live in a regular home, with regular pets.

 

I put my pants on one leg at a time.

 

There’s nothing “bucket list-y” about me!!!

 

So, since that’s the case (I assure you, it is), I wonder why on earth anyone would ever put me on their bucket list!!!

 

Because I write books?

 

Because I shared my life with a serval?

 

Because I hung out with DeForest Kelley?

 

Because I’m transgender?

 

Heck, all of my experiences on those fronts have already been shared in my books. My life is pretty much an open book. I have nothing more to share, if that’s why I’m on somebody’s bucket list.

 

And NONE of that should make me “bucket list” material, as I see it.

 

I just pursued goals and reached them. I’ve done nothing that almost anyone else wasn’t entirely capable of doing themselves, had their goals been the same as mine. I just proactively “went for it”… and BINGO!  What happened as a result of that exceeded my wildest expectations!

 

It’s just kinda scary to be expected to be something in person that I’m not. It’s even scarier to think of trying to live up to whatever it is that got me put on someone’s bucket list in the first place!

 

It’s like I’ve been put on a pedestal I didn’t elect to be on. And it’s easy to get kicked off a pedestal. All I have to do it make one misstep, or lean a little too far left or right or forward or backward, and down I’ll go like Humpty Dumpty!

 

It reminds me of the time I was at a Star Trek convention to talk about De after my first book about him had come out. I went into an almost-empty auditorium and sat in a chair about midway between the back of the room and the stage, as I had always done as an anonymous  fan.

 

I was just sitting there looking around the room to see if I recognized anybody else in the room as it began to fill up. I spotted someone I didn’t know sitting several rows behind me and off to the right. She was looking in my direction and appeared to be lit up like a Christmas tree, so I looked in the same direction she was looking (toward the front of the auditorium, I thought) but there was no one on stage or anywhere near it who looked like a celebrity, so (confused) I looked back in her direction and then realized she was keyed in on me like a bird dog on a duck. That’s when I realized she had, in her lap, a copy of my De book!

 

I thought, “Oh, my God! NOW I know what it feels like to be considered a celebrity!”

 

It was frightening!

 

I quickly motioned her over to come sit by me so we could talk… and so I could talk her off the ledge (as De and Carolyn had done for me the first time I had an actual sit down meeting with them).  My mission became, “Let her know you’re a regular person!”

 

Ever since then, I can get tied in knots over stuff like this.

 

And being on three bucket lists qualifies as “stuff like this”! It makes me as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.

 

I will never be able to live up to being on anyone’s bucket list.  I know this for a fact.  I don’t even want to have to try to measure up to something like that.

 

So, although I’m willing to help someone achieve something on their bucket list whenever I can—and I can certainly do this–I do worry that I’ll be a disappointment.

 

I’m just me.  I write, I hang with my goats and cats, I go to movies sometimes, I read, and I write. That’s what’s on my bucket list. Mundane stuff. Nothing “splendiferous” or amazing.

 

As long as these folks realize they’re going to be hanging with me, and that I won’t measure up to  their expectations (unless they’re reasonable and attainable as a mere mortal), I think we’ll be all right.

 

But if they’re expecting fireworks, or angels, or anything more spectacular than simply sitting with goats and yakking until we’re both hoarse,  or watching some De videos together, or maybe going through some  picture albums and scrapbooks, I’m afraid they’re going to be desperately disappointed, and that would crush me…and probably them.

 

So, if you’re one of the people I’ve heard from in this regard, please be forewarned: Don’t expect too much, and I’ll do my best to keep you from being disappointed!