Bucket Lists

I never heard of bucket lists until Hollywood made a movie about two old men with a death wish. Okay, they were already dying, so it was more like a what-do-I-have-to-lose wish, but still. Some of their ideas were pretty gutsy (drive a motorcycle on the Great Wall of China), while other challenges only required them to step out of their box a little. Like helping a stranger. Laughing til they cried. And skydiving. Freefalling from fourteen thousand feet is way out of the box for somebody like me, but those two old guys were up for it. It would have been a good idea to combine some stuff on their lists. You know, try a little multi-tasking, like helping a stranger out of the airplane while they laughed til they cried. It would have sped things up a little bit—they didn’t have a lot of time.

I don’t really have what I’d call a bucket list, but there are a couple of little things I’ve always wanted to do. I’d like to see a tornado. In person. I don’t want to see a funnel cloud tear up a town or a farm or threaten anyone’s life, especially mine. I just want to see a colossal, concise, dark twister far enough away that nobody’s in danger while it does a little floor show for me. It’s kind of a huge request when I put it like that—a dangerous cyclone that fizzles out before it can make history. It’s almost so big it needs its very own bucket. Don’t be a hater, now. I’m not the only person on the planet who’s fascinated by nature and secretly wishes they’d spent their life as a storm chaser. And I know if I’d grown up on the plains of Kansas I’d have seen more than enough tornados—probably so many I’d never want to see one again. But I grew up in the desert where the closest thing we have to a tornado are dust devils that filthy up my freshly washed truck. That’s not very satisfying.

I’d also like to see the Emerald Isle for myself to find out if it’s as green as everyone says it is. Now that I know the name of the county where my family ancestry was uprooted, a visit to Ireland is the one overseas trip that would be worth the hassle of dealing with the TSA.

That’s about it. Maybe buy a trailer with a king size bed in it so we could drag our own hotel around with us while we travel across America visiting relatives. That’s all. It’s a pretty short list. Something a little dangerous.  Something a little green. And the fifth-wheel thing. Come to think of it, it’s so short it’s more like a thimble list.

There was something else I’ve wanted to do ever since I was a kid. I’d even say it had the number two spot after Dorothy’s spin on a windstorm. But today, I crossed it off my list. Lightened my dream sheet. Cleared my agenda. Not because I accomplished that item, though. It’s more like there was a hole in my bucket, Eliza, Eliza, and the item fell out the bottom, never to be seen again. It was a sad day around here for a while afterwards. Losing something you once longed for is hard.

I really enjoy parades. And until today, watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has been my favorite thing to do on Thanksgiving morning. My dream was to spend this holiday in New York one day, blow a wad of money on those front row seats right outside Macy’s where VIPs—and hopefully tourists with enough cash—sit to watch the Rockettes do high kicks and Broadway dancers perform clips from their big shows, and cheer in person when Santa shows up.

But I live too far away to casually drive over to the Big Apple at two in the morning and wait in sub-zero wind child temperatures for eight hours for the parade to start. I’ve had to settle for a front row seat in my favorite chair in our living room and watch it broadcast in between commercials and cheesy announcer banter. It hasn’t been all bad. At least I wasn’t cold, and the bathroom was nearby. Today I had the whole event carefully planned out. I was organized. I was rested. I was prepared. If I played my cards right, I might even get to watch the whole thing before it was time to heat up the oven and get the big meal ready.

With the DVR set up, the turkey pre-cooked and carved the night before, the fridge filled with potatoes and stuffing and cranberry relish, we made a yummy breakfast and settled in to watch as much of the spectacle as I wanted. Truer words were never spoken.

About twenty minutes into the big event, Broadway and Macy’s and NBC made a calculated move that no one but the announcers and dancers knew anything about. Calling the moment historic, the television giant and department store linked arms with the platform of the LGBT agenda and took it upon themselves to destroy another piece of innocence in homes across America.

That is nothing anyone should be thankful for.

In my daughter’s living room, her three young children sat watching the Pillsbury Doughboy balloon float at eye level while bands warmed up, waiting enthusiastically while the rest of the procession gathered momentum for the morning they’d anticipated for weeks. They’d even invited my husband and me to come over and join in the pajama-clad event and watch the parade together, but I had to reluctantly pass. I was in charge of the meal this Turkey Day and couldn’t fit it in. No one knew what a spectacle it would turn out to be, though, as suddenly, without their parents’ consent, our young grandchildren were exposed to the first lesbian kiss ever on Macy’s televised Thanksgiving Day Parade. A kiss that the network and the department store’s CEOs were thrilled to call “historic.”

Yes, it was. But it was so much more than that. It was tragic.

While the announcers did provide a brief description of the story of the new musical, The Prom, they gave no warning that an act that once earned movies an R rating would be the whole point of promoting the show. Let me be very clear in case I haven’t been so far. This is not about tolerance. This is about respecting the rights of parents to protect the innocence of their children, especially in their own homes.

Under no circumstances should any child sitting in their living room have been subjected to a confusing scene like watching two lesbian women engage in a prolonged kiss when they were supposed to have been treated to clowns leading the Snoopy balloon. Instead, their naivete was stolen, their safety hijacked, all by a shocking disregard for the right of all families to decide when the time is right to explain to their children values they may not be mature enough to handle.

I don’t know if this even qualifies as a bucket list debacle. I think my bucket was just blown to smithereens and, while it happened on home soil, I’m not sure it qualifies as friendly fire. I think it was a massive betrayal.

So, thanks a lot, Macy’s, for shortening my bucket list. Thanks for making it clear to parents that they can’t even trust a parade anymore. You just made their jobs even harder. There’s not a chance in Manhattan that I’ll ever again watch your Thanksgiving Day Parade, let alone make any effort to come see it in person. I guess that’s not so bad, come to think of it. I just saved a bucket load of money for a dream you destroyed just as carelessly as the innocence of my grandchildren.

Come to think of it, you pretty much wiped out my whole list in less than twenty minutes. Way to multi-task. You set loose a tornado with no warning to observers, swallowed up all my illusions of how green was my valley, and made me wish I lived in a fifth wheel right now somewhere so far off the grid that neither myself or anyone else in my family will ever have your political agenda shoved down our throats again on Turkey Day.

You certainly outdid yourself today. I guess even corporations have a list, though this one wound up in the wrong container. Next time, aim for the circular file.

This idea should have kicked the bucket.

Thanks to Chris Drackett for permission to use the above photo in this piece. The original photo can be viewed at https://www.flickr.com/photos/drackett/188553809/in/photolist-hEotK-i8URL-bk3wkW-4nsMFs-bjPtN9-2kUovq-75xSUQ-spHN6-8nDyzy-cwnj6o-9nFan2-MiH5w-C5Aqyi-CSwix-kQqSUH-4PaFqX-pMJLox-yv4N-P8b3z8-gBMqwt-WcPLvT-W5dqTk-oXFfou-8MBttz-6cWiQo-X7qP1R-2kPnCA-dbonqc-2NbbND-81Ta8C-9bkZZR-qwDoES-3g5pZ8-fQKg1m-5omaRb-dTJS6s-8nH4CG-dQ6JNV-97ikLR-oFp5aA-pqzsg2-brYQSd-95xMzb-29c3qN9-9RNamA-7uttDg-fLDZX-dshhi6-4m3gpP-4icemi