Everyday another list

Everyday I find another list in the newspapers, magazines, or social media, telling me why I should eat this and not that, do these exercises and not those, drink coffee, and here’s why, drink wine, preferably red, travel lists of unforgettable destination, and why we should get at the very least eight hours of sleep, so stop reading lists.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of these goddamn lists.

The best make-out songs, dance songs, hip-hop songs, and eighties songs.  The best songs to listen to while you’re ripping up lists.

There’s a top ten list of things that you didn’t know about the movie, Forrest Gump.  Really?  The only thing anyone really needs to know about Forrest Gump is that life is like a box of chocolates … ’cause when you look at the bottom of the boxes nowadays there’s another freaking list of exactly what you’re going to get.  Suck it Forrest, suck it, ’cause your momma didn’t know what in the hell she was talking about!

Fight Club had a list of rules, but I can’t talk about it.

David Letterman has a nightly top ten, ran out, and had to retire.

At work I have a checklist (canopy, cords, harness, crouch, dive and pull – that was the bailout list for the military trainer, but nowadays I fly the airbus, where the captain goes down with the ship), and when I’m packing my bags for the jet I have a list of four important things that I cannot forget.  I’m not going to tell you what that list is, but the mantra goes something like this: one, two, three, four, everything else I can buy at the store.

We have the honey-do lists (yard and paint) and the honey-don’t lists (sex, and sex), but I’m so sick of these godforsaken lists that I can’t even bring myself to compose a freaking grocery list when Lord knows that I need one.  I’ll bet there’s even a list on why we get  Alzheimer’s disease, and I’ll bet I even read that list.

Most of these lists tell us what we’re doing wrong.  They tell us why we’re fat and broke.

The top ten list of reasons why you’re a pathetic loser.

1) Your father ignored the list on the health benefits of birth control, and wham bam, thank you ma’am, you were born.  Mistake number one.

2) You then suckled your momma’s teet, which was loaded with saturated fats.

3) You had the nerve to reach puberty, unregulated with hormones.

4) You discovered beer,

5) and on a Saturday night promised her that you loved her, convinced her that the top ten reason why she shouldn’t trust you was bullshit, and then promptly knocked her up.

6) You then failed to read the top ten list of well-paying jobs, and ended up cutting lumber in the redwood forests until the tree huggers came along and ruined a perfectly awful career.

7) When it was time to buy a home, because your prom date, aka, wife, was insistent, you then failed to read the list about the top ten mortgage missteps.

8) The top ten reasons why you’re going bald, and the top ten most ridiculous things you can do to fake it.

9) The ten most popular places for middle-aged hair growth (hint: the belly button is number five),

10) And the number ten reason why you’re such a pathetic loser, you finished reading this lists.  Boom!

Of course, God was the original list maker, what with the ten commandments and the seven sacraments; and in our quest for heavenly glory it all went to hell in a hand basket.

We love to start lists, read lists, but we simply can’t finish lists.

So when it’s time to tackle that bucket list, don’t worry about reaching the end.  Simply climb that mountain and cross that bridge.  And the number one reason why, when you get there, you should go ahead and jump?   No more freaking lists!