On our date night, maybe two years ago, my husband and I decided to start a bucket list. I think each of us might have placed two things on our list, ended up chatting about them, and never got any farther. Today, I decided to start again and this time I was going to finish it.
During my teen years, it was the jitterbug that was the rage. Once Harry and I were married, we realized we both still loved to dance. As we aged, I told him I’d like us to practice some kind of comical dance skit. He’d be the straight man and I’d do all the fun stuff. I said we could think of lots of movements to a jitterbug song. We’d be the “talk of Kutztown” at all the Senior Citizen groups. He still worries about his bones getting broken. Hmmmf, I’m the one doing all the work. All he has to do is stand there.
I’d very much like to be on the Ellen DeGeneres TV show and I figured out how to do it. Recently, I read the book, “How not to act like a Little Old Lady,” by Mary McHugh.
In one chapter she talks about her journalist days. Her and a number of journalists flew to Scotland to cover a Scotch Whisky Tour. During the day they went to a number of distilleries taking notes and asking questions, most times having a taste of scotch.
One night they were invited to a party at a Scottish distiller. At some point, the host stated, “We’ve entertained our American guests, and now we’d like them to entertain us.”
It turns out Mary, during the day, unfortunately had announced to her friends that she does an impression of bacon frying. Just then the host called, “Mary McHugh will now do her impression of bacon frying.”
She states, she had no shame, went up on stage in a “nice dress, stockings, high heels, and wearing pearls.” She then lay down on the floor on her back, waited a minute, then started wiggling one arm to the other, and on down the body to the legs. In the end her whole body wiggled as the “bacon shriveled up and finished cooling.”
She states she was congratulated through the evening about her bacon impression.
This year (2017), at our family Christmas gathering, my four great grandchildren and myself will do the impression of “bacon frying.” (Don’t tell anyone in my family. It’s a surprise!)
I’m going to have someone video the “bacon frying,” place it on Facebook to go viral. At some point, Ellen DeGeneres staff will see it and invite me and my great-grandchildren to her show.
The last item on my bucket list has to do with a card game, “Pig and Hog” that my mother taught us as youngsters. We know Mom made it up, no such card game was ever on the market.
It’s played with Flinch cards and the idea is to graduate from a pig to hog status. We had so much fun with this game, even with belly laughs on the kitchen floor. I always felt it should go on the market. With my sister, Gladys’ help, I wrote up the rules. In July 1982, we got a patent for “Pig and Hog.” It turned out Gladys and I had no idea how to go about selling this card game to toy makers. The patent is still sitting in my file folder. I’d still love to see it in toy stores, as a gift to all children, in memory of Mom.
How about my readers. What’s on your bucket list?
