Your life list, non-sportswriting version

This is one hell of a thread...

To all who have shared, thank you. Sometimes it takes meaningless posts like these to realize how lucky we are. And, to those who've had a rough go of it, as Handsome said, you're still alive. Good luck reaching your goals or dreams someday.

As for me, at age 23, I've been blessed to have...

...Prayed at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem on the Sabbath with two of my best friends.
...Stood in awe at the Sistine Chapel.
...Sat at a computer in awe of Vida Guerra.
...Played four years of football with my best friends.
...Had my first football start be during my senior year, on homecoming, with my whole family in the crowd after the starting guard got hurt (sucks for him).
...What I consider the greatest group of friends someone can have.
...Covered the NBA All-Star game.
...Gotten a blow job on the steps of a cliff overlooking the Mediteranean Sea at 3 AM from a girl I'd met just days before in Cinque Terra, Italy.
...Not gotten herpes from said encounter.
...An amazing relationship with my parents and two of my three siblings.
...A niece on the way, who I can't wait to hold.
...A $25 lottery scratcher in Israel win me $500, even though I can't read Hebrew and I had no idea I'd won.
...Been to 16 states and covered games in 10 of them.
...Had sex in the front seat of my car (an old-school Oldsmobile with perfectly designed seats) at a park in the middle of the night.
...Conducted some amazing interviews.
...Laughed a lot.
...Hugged a lot.
...Loved a lot......

 

Been to 25 or 26 states, plus DC. Goal is all 50 before I turn 50.
The rule is I have to stop, so airports and train stations count and the states I visited after I turned 16.
Worked as EMT/fireman for 10 years
Delivered two babies
Saved more lives than I can count
Jumped off a cliff to go grab someone who had fallen off
I have a neato photo of me cutting a person out of a car.
And more stories than I can count about those days
Had sex with four different women in a 48-hour time span
Caught a shark while deep sea fishing
Fell in love
Fell out
Nearly died - twice
Have a group of friends that I don't deserve.
And a family that loves me, even if I'm not around that much.

 

I saved some lives once. I pulled over and went to sleep.

 

On one of the coolest threads I've read here, FB, this is one of the coolest things I've read.

This is always a quandary on state-counts. I tend to subscribe to the concept that a state counts if you actually spend money there ... outside of an airport.

By those guidelines, I'm at 26 plus D.C. and Puerto Rico. Along with sections of the Mid South and 2/3 of New England (Maine, Connecticut, NH, Vermont), I'm missing most of the Great Plains: the swath of Idaho west to Wisconsin and the Dakotas south to Kansas. The only Western states I'm missing are Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

Others on the list in no particular order...

-- Am the father of two wonderful kids who absolutely GET IT.
-- Took one of them -- my 13-year-old -- to Maui, Toronto and Chicago on trips that neither of us will ever forget.
-- Won Ben Stein's Money and Jeopardy
-- Played 9 holes of golf with my then-90-year-old dad... who WALKED the nine.
-- Watched my son -- in his first year of the soccer playoffs -- shut out the No. 1 team for two quarters of regulation, two quarters of overtime and two quarters of sudden death in goal, then score the winning goal against them in a shootout.
-- Leaned on President Ford's golf cart and subsequently shook hands with him right after Phil Mickelson did.
-- Shook hands with, conversed with on more than one occasion and set up a future golf date with the Premier of Bermuda. If there's a cooler head-of-state anywhere in the world, I'd love to meet him.
-- Walked nine holes on his home course with Duffy Waldorf and his wife.
-- Had Jack Nicklaus pat me on the shoulder and wink at me as he came off the course during one of the few tournaments he plays anymore.
-- Was present for Wayne Gretzky's LA Kings debut and his 802nd goal.
-- Covered four Rose Bowls, a Stanley Cup Final, a U.S. Open and a PGA
-- Like Buck, attended games at Tiger Stadium, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field and Yankee Stadium
-- Athletic feats: shot my age twice (for nine holes) in golf, captained my Adult Dodgeball team to the inaugural league title against the undefeated team and ... well, for a role player in basketball (with two trick knees) and baseball, that's pretty much it
-- Survived the Panorama Fire, which burned everything on three sides around my high school. Got myself interviewed on the news for it.
-- Survived a near-drowning off Laguna. Helped save my friend who was caught in the current behind me.
-- Won $1200 in one can't-miss weekend on the craps table. Won nearly half that much by spiking a King-high straight flush at a poker table in Mississippi. Won nearly a third of that original total one memorable night playing poker in college. That paid my college tuition the following semester.
-- Had Jim Murray "berate" me for telling him the first thing I read my one-day-old son was one of his columns. "Whatta you do that for, Bird? Whatta you trying to do to the kid?"
-- Overcame getting fired for a ridiculous reason from my last sportswriting job to get the best job I've ever had with some of the best people I've ever had the privilege of working for and with.
-- Teach college classes.
-- Have read, by one estimation, more than 1,000 books in my lifetime. Look forward to reading thousands more.

 

Had second-degree sunburn burst when a line drive hit the bubble on my stomach during a softball game I was umpiring in 10th grade.
Tried to scrape my freckles off with lemon ice cubes.
Had a puck hit me in the head when I was shooting a college game from the penalty box. Still have a nasty scar from said puck.
Jumped out of a plane for a story I was writing on skydiving for the college paper. Busted my face on the altimeter on the way down, barely avoided landing on a Saguaro cactus.
Completed the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim several times, always in one day. Once did it with mom and her mom, got beat by both.
Ran the Boston Marathon. Had to literally be carried over the finish line by a Boston cop. Couldn't sit down for a week. Dumbest …idea …ever..
Met incredible people who, I soon leaned, would always have my back.
Moved to Australia.
Had a blast.
Had a blast with the love of my life as we sailed around the New South Wales coast.
Got melanoma. Learned sun is not my friend.
Met incredibly cool people who will always be my mates.
Covered sports in New Zealand, all over Australia, Papua New Guinea and Malaysia.
Had tea with Lady Murdoch in her Adelaide garden. Learned to curtsy.
Cried when Sydney got the Olympics and again when Muhammad Ali lit the Atlanta flame.
Moved to New York, thought I’d stay for a year, still here 10 summers on.
Held my dad’s hand as he took his last breath 10 years ago.
Invested in a friend’s bar, still haven’t received a return, just a few free drinks.
Haven’t let New York beat me down.
Talked and drank wine with Neil and Tim Finn of Crowded House on a cross-country flight. Saw B52 concert at Salt Lake City Olympics with fellow SJers. Still wake up singing, “Why don’t you dance with me? I’m not no limburger!”
Been to all 50 states, though a handful might not count since I viewed them from the back seat of our family station wagon when I was just a little girl. Doubt I stayed awake through Kansas.
Fell in love in Croatia …fell in love in Prague … fell in love in Paris and even a bit in Nagano.
Like Joe, I saw a whale off the coast of Lincoln City, Oregon; my view came just days ago. Had to grab my one-year-old niece as she nearly slipped under the guide rail and onto the sea lions.


I wouldn’t trade much. Maybe lay off the lemon ice cubes.

 

the greatest moment(s) of my life happens (almost) on a daily basis when one of the two heartbreakers runs up to me for no reason, gives me a big kiss on the cheek with a monster hug and says, "daddy, i luuuuuuuuuve you" and i know they really mean it.

nonsappy stuff:

i watched mt. st. helens blow it's top on may 18, 1980, as a wee lad from the roof of my parents' home.

once while standing alone on a dock on the puget sound, i watched as a gray whale approached the dock on which i was standing, it then swam underneath, rolled a 360 all while scratching its back on the piling i was standing on and then exited and reentered (with a tail smash) the water about 20 yards from where i was standing.

i also once "hit" mrs. petty five times one day/night while lodged in the village of cooperstown.

 

For those of you missing Alaska, feel free to come on it. It's beautiful. Especially in February. I highly recommend you come up then.If you don't mind it being so cold you forget your gender.

 

Done some stuff, had some experiences, seen some things. Maybe too often, too many, too much, or else not enough. But that was all yesterday, and none of it really means much.

What does? Helping out, looking at the world before it all decays away and, two days ago, teaching my daughter to ride a bike.

The rest is scorekeeping, and when you're watching the scoreboard... you're just watching.

 

Then you're either 1) an eight-second man or 2) not a baseball fan.

 

Don't want to do something. Just do something.

I'll give you an example: The Cincinnati Reds held an open tryout at Windsor High in the summer of 1999. I'd just moved to Brattleboro to work at the paper and thought it would be a good first-person story. But the real reason I went was my lifelong dream to pitch for the Dodgers. So I went more on a lark. I have a strong arm and shoulder, so why not? If ever I had a chance, one final chance, to see a dream through, this was it. Yadda yadda, I didn't impress the two scouts, but I faced 6 batters and not one of them scored, and I stranded one of them at 3rd base. Baseball is baseball is baseball, right, so my ERA in the only mound appearance in my life, was 0.00. For a day, I was like Orel Hershiser.

Anyway, you're a sassy lass. You've probably done plenty and just can't think of some of them.

 

I'm pretty much like IJAG. But, there are a few things I'd like to mention. Feel free to dismiss them with a "pshaw." While trivial to you, they mean a lot to me:

• Saw an albino 'possum.
• Saw an albino mourning dove.
• Saw a snowy owl. In Kansas. That qualifies it as a rarity.
• Have set foot in 18 states, the coolest of which being, in no particular order, Colorado (Rocky Mountains), Montana (Custer National Battlefield)[Hi, SC!], South Dakota (Mt. Rushmore) and Nebraska (Cabela's headquarters in Sydney ;D).
• Stood and stared slack-jawed along with my Dad when three trumpeter swans flew right over us while we were pheasant hunting. We looked at each other and never said a word.
• Later that morning saw my Dad shoot what would be his last pheasant. (Reminds me of one of my most favorite quotes, this one by Robert Ruark: "How kind it is that most of us will never know when we have fired our last shot.")
• Broke 100 straight clay targets at a sanctioned Amateur Trapshooting Association event. Finished on post one and got five straight hard left-angle targets. I was shaking like a dog shitting pine cones. But, I smoked every one of those sons-a-bitches.
• Turned around the next weekend and did it again. Wasn't shaking, though, having been there-done that.
• Shot at the Grand American trapshooting tournament in Vandalia, Ohio.
• I can proudly say that while sitting in a duck blind, I would just as soon watch waterfowl as draw down on them.

There are others. But, there is no need to toot the horn too often.

 

Add List:

-- Have walked all four presidential assassination sites, as well as the Lorraine Motel in Memphis and Beal na Blath in west Cork.
-- Have heard Mass in eight different languages, including Irish and Farsi.