Least Favorite Goal? No Such Thing

By Robin Weaver

This month's theme, "My Least Favorite Goal..." really threw me for a helix. Why have a goal you put at the bottom of your to-do list?  And if it's at the bottom, will you ever do it? So is it really a goal?

Instead of dragging you into my confused merry-go-round, I decided to focus on the things at the top of the list. Then it occurred to me, that's the proverbial bucket list.  Thus, if it "ain't" on the bucket list, it's a least favorite goal.

I feel fortunate to have checked off many of the things within my power to accomplish. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a long list. For example, I’m still waiting on my hug from Niall Horan, hankering for dinner cooked by Bobby Flay, and my name has yet to appear on the NYT Best Seller list, but I have been to Hawaii, London, and Yankee Stadium. I’ve also been skiing in Alaska and dancing in Tokyo.

Fear not, I won’t bore you with my list of I want to do.  If I did, “Avoid listening to folks droning on and on about bucket lists” will be in your bucket list.

And thinking about buckets made me wonder where the term originated.

Believe it or not, the phrase is relatively recent.  Merriam Webster defines the term as a list of things one has not done but wants to do before dying. Obviously, Bucket List was popularized by the 2007 movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, but that wasn’t the first time the phrase was uttered. Believe it or not, the actual terminology is related to computer programming. Naturally a geek like me would find that fascinating. Compilers reference a bucket list of objects

Bucket list, as a list of things to do, is derived from the phrase kicking the bucket—aka, dying, a phrase in use since at least 1785. Although the derivation is quite old, according to Merriam Webster, "bucket list," as we use it today, was first used in 2006.

But Webster might not be precisely correct. In 2004, the term was used—perhaps for the first time?—in in the book Unfair & Unbalanced: The Lunatic Magniloquence of Henry E. Panky, by Patrick M. Carlisle. (That guy needs some help picking a title, right?)

Anyway, Mr. Carlisle wrote: “So, anyway, a Great Man, in his querulous twilight years, who doesn’t want to go gently into that blacky black night. He wants to cut loose, dance on the razor’s edge, pry the lid off his bucket list!”

In current times, a “bucket list”isn't so morbid. It can simply be a wish list to be accomplished by a certain deadline—like the things President Obama wanted to accomplish in his term of office. Not sure how he did. Similarly, you can find many suggestions online for your “summer bucket list,” or things to do before autumn comes.

Did you know bucket list is also slang for a ugly females. 

People can be so cruel.

Happy New Year everyone!