Before You Die
Like most people Jeremy Fischer has a bucket list, a compilation of things he'd like to get around to before he can't. Not everyone has an explicit menu, like, say, Angela, in the not to be missed story “Angie's lists.”1 But we all have at least a notion regarding things we hope to have or do or see or experience ahead of the final punt of the dinner pail.
Some days the priorities get rearranged, of course. Even if topping Everest is one of your “must-dos,” on any given morning a second cup of coffee might be a more immediate concern.
In any event, Jeremy's bucket is topped by this simple overarching goal: He wants to winnow. All of it. To the “one thing” that will totally “do it” for him. Winnow, winnow, winnow.
“Why?” [I hear you thinking.]
Well, Jeremy has reached the age where our brains finally congeal and rational thought takes hold. Scientists suggest that this is somewhere in the mid-twenties, but there's a good reason the much-heralded Founders® stipulated 35 as a requirement for the presidency, and I suspect they'd have set the bar higher if life-expectancy hadn't generally been so very low back then. You mostly want your president to finish his (or her) term. [Mostly.] Our boy is in his mid-forties.
What he's come to understand is that at any given moment a jet engine could fall off a plane, a Chinese Long March 5B® rocket could leave orbit, an asteroid could come screeching in, or a chunk of steak could get caught in his wind-pipe with no one on hand to maneuver a Heimlich®. His little adventure could be ended in a heartbeat (or lack thereof.2) So, it's come to this: what does he most want to do before that turbojet plops on his noggin?
Where to start?
Narrowing one's choices amounts to a conceptual diet, does it not? This brings us to General Rule #23: “If you want to provide the tools to engineer a successful diet, you need a menu and a shopping list.” Impulse buys must be avoided, no matter how good those Dove Bars® or Lay's® potato chips look while you're cruising down the aisle.
So Jeremy came up with three headings after he read “Angie's lists,” which made him realize that writing things down was a fine idea.4 To have. To see. To do.
The first category was simplicity itself. He's not particularly acquisitive and he already has pretty much everything he might want. Ongoing it comes down to food and fuel and an occasional item of clothing, together with replacements for things that break down. Phone, laptop, printer, coffee maker, toothbrush, floss … that sort of thing. Oh, and eventually another vehicle … the ephemera of life. No metaphorical “Dove Bars®” in that batch.
To see? There are always the biggies: Grand Canyon, the Egyptian pyramids, the Mara Masai, Machu Picchu, the Louvre®, Hawaii, Alaska, Hudson Bay, the Great Barrier Reef, Graceland® and the other side of the mountain.5 Those, of course, also involve doing, but the “doing” is principally a matter of getting there. So he'll set that category aside for the nonce.
To do? This is the toughie for at least two reasons.
First off, as noted upslope, Jeremy's brain is fully formed and he's self-aware enough to know that he can't possibly “do it all.”That engenders humility, which is one of the most useful realizations in a human life. Everything takes longer than we tend to expect and even in the best of circumstances things don't always work out. Also, no matter what you felt at age 16, you aren't invincible and you won't be here very long.6
Poof!
Bringing us to the second matter. How to rank the big to- dos? In some ways getting a good night's sleep should be right up there, oughtn't it?7 A lack thereof leaves a soul feeling pretty ragged. But it isn't the sort of thing most people would think of as “bucket-list” material unless they are plagued by insomnia.
What you probably wouldn't guess is that one thing our boy has had in mind ever since he folded his first paper airplane—back in grade-school—is the possibility of building and flying his own real-life flying machine. That has seemed like such a very cool idea! Even if he just used a kit, though “just” is a relative sort of descriptor. One person's “just” in this context could easily be a “Really? You built an airplane from a kit? You are so freaking amazing!”8
But then Jeremy read this next sentence and decided against the idea.
A friend of your author who was a HUGE aero-motor enthusiast told him (your author, if that's not clear) about an acquaintance in Idaho who had put together a kit and crashed and died on his first flight.
You can see where that would dampen enthusiasm.
Another “do” on his listicle is to complete a New York Times® Sunday crossword puzzle in ink. He'd heard, back in the 90s, that then-prez Bill Clinton® routinely accomplished that, and Jeremy took it as a sort of maxi-personal challenge. Kind of an “anything he can do I can do better” sort of thing. But your author knows9 that such a feat is hard enough in pencil, with a large eraser at hand. Also, one must entertain deep suspicion10 that this “factoid” is the product of campaign manager rumor-mongering intended to make the ink-stained candidate appear super-smart.
Is there an un-doctored video of the stunt? I don't think so.
Meanwhile, Clinton was obsessed with a two-letter word,11 and we who attempt to create12 crosswords and sell them to NYT® know that two-letter words are not permitted. So why pull that out in court? (I mean that “argument” not “that” that. You don't want to see “that that” in court.) Right? You have to know it isn't going to fly, at least in public opinion.13 But public figures caught with their “pants down”14 are given to wide stretches of their legal imaginations.
Where were we?
Oh, 19 across, “Friend of a 38 down.”
That'll stump Bill.
But back to Jeremy. He's pretty deep. He'd so totally like to answer the Riddle of the Sphinx. I mean, we all know the answer, right? But he wants to be there. In front of her. And answer correctly. And find out what happens next.
I mean, getting eaten if you fail is one thing, but what happens if you don't? That's the interesting part.
Let's see, what else?
I guess he's winnowed.
Egypt here he comes!
***
NOTE PER FOOTNOTES: Substack starts off with new numbering each time I post a story. But Footnotes in the original book are continuous and often refer back to previous super important stuff, So original Footnote #s are included below in [#]s.
1 [62] In the memorable collection Fifty Wheys to Love Your Liver, Brave Ulysses Books, 2018. As indicated, Angela has multiples.
2 [63] Per Art Garfunkel, “Endings always come at last, endings always come too fast, they come too fast and they pass too slow, I love you and that's all I know.1” “All I Know,” Garfunkel, 1988. Of course, an ending involving a turbojet would not necessarily “pass too slow.”
1. Footnote to a footnote? This is totally true.
3 [64] Amazing! Only on page 39 and we have a second General Rule!
4 [65] I'm sure that story had the same effect on you. Recall that Angela was obsessive enough about lists that she often added things she'd already done so she could have more of them checked off. Laundry√. Call mom√. Go to a Pink Floyd® concert in the rain√. (You really need to read that story if you've skipped it.
5 [66] “To see what he could see, to see what he could see!”
6 [67] Your author is looking back from 71 at the moment, and it has gone by way too fast, IMHO. Way too fast.
7 [68] This is much on your author's mind just now. An arthritic left knee has kept me awake in the wee hours in recent weeks, ibuprofen or no. For a person who habitually rises at 3:30 a.m., pain at midnight is not high on the list of preferences. But I see that I'm interjecting “me.”
8 [69] Reminding your author of a fairly singular experience he had back in his twenties, as a mason, in New Hampshire. His employer called the crew to a residential address where we found the block basement wall at the rear of the house had been demolished. What happened? Earthquake? Explosion? Nope. The owner had built an airplane from a kit in his basement and had to tear out the wall to extricate it. Hard to say if that was stupid or ballsy.
9 [70] I know, I know, this isn't supposed to be “all about me.” Whatever.
10 [71] I certainly do.
11 [72] “It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the—if he—if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement. … Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.”
—Clinton's Grand Jury testimony Aug. 17, 1998.
(Parse much?)
12 [73] Guilty.
13 [74] To be clear we are talking about flight-type “fly” and not “that” fly which may have figured in the “is” thing. He should have kept “that” that inside the fly.
14 [75] And why, pray tell (as the expression has it) do so many elected officials have their “pants down?”