Remember the movie, Bucketlist with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman?
They are in a cancer ward and are both diagnosed with terminal cancer and given the same time to live so they decide to make a list of all of the things they want to accomplish before they kick the bucket, a rather quaint way to say 'die,' and probably having nothing to do with Mrs. O'Leary's cow.
The movie was awful, and I'll save you the time by telling you they do not die and find, after going around the world to accomplish their outrageous bucket lists, that the diagnosis for both of them was wrong and in fact they have all the time in the world so they go off to Maine and get married. Yeah, it was awful.
But it got Streetpuppy to thinking, what if a Streetpuppy figured out exactly how much time he or she had to be in Homeless Nation?
Remember, it's a lousy place to be, but it has it's moments, and one should always remember to make the best use of the time you are anyplace lousy or not, so there are probably things you would want to accomplish or even that you wish you could do, or would have done better in the time spent in Homeless Nation.
So Streetpuppy compiled a list of things -she knows when she will return to civilian life - a bucket list.
Learn to panhandle better. The only time I ever did it, I made exactly four-dollars and 26 cents, a pair of black socks, a whole bunch of prepared food which I could not possibly eat and an admonition from one elderly lady not to drink ever again, and was forever the butt of panhandling jokes in my neighborhood.
Pay more attention to those Bible study classes one must cheerfully endure before some of the feeds. I could have learned something, the Bible is actually a great history book, and I always felt guilty that I looked at the sessions as an appetizer.
Socked the large woman at the Salvation Army who slugged me for nothing at all and knocked my coffee right out of my hand. She was wrong to do it and I ended up cowering whenever I saw her around and I should have been braver than that.
Ditto for the woman who nailed me at another shelter and then chased me over the wall. I should have stood my ground, even though she was thrice my size.
Learn to figure out where the sprinklers are before I go to sleep on somebody's lawn.
Learn to keep my mouth shut when somebody cuts in front of me in a line..anywhere. But, Noooooooo, always had to say something to the butthead who did it and some of them are very scary people.
Learn to clean fingernails in the dark.
Learn to never give five dollars to anybody who says, "Can I hold five dollars for you 'til tomorrow?"
Ditto for a quarter or a cigarette.
Never, ever tell anybody about your past life, and if you have to, lie. You never know what they will do with the information, and that includes some of the so called 'case managers' in places called 'Homeless Recovery.' (And I should have socked him, too, and I think I just might.)
Learn to Trust. It's damm hard in Homeless Nation to trust anybody at all, especially new found friends be they Streetpuppies or civilians, especially if they say they want to help you.
Learn to wash up in the Mcdonald's bathroom and put on the makeup in three minutes flat.
Go and thank Charlie for all of his kind words and encouragement and joy,he's one of a kind and the best 'street preacher' I've ever known.
Go and find the witch who stole my one-hundred dollar bottle of Chanel 19 during the first week I was homeless... it was one of the few things from the previous life I had with me. She promised she would replace it, never has, and I want to look her in the eye and say, "Keep it, you obviously will never be able to make enough money on your own to buy anything at the rate you're going.'
Learn to wear shoes that are two sizes too large and grin and bear it.
Kind of pathetic, eh?
Just little things, but they stick out as either things I should have done, or want to do better, or didn't do and regret it. And I'll probably think of a hundred more things, but most likely I will have hung up my Streetpuppy ears before that happens.
And one more thing I need to put on my bucketlist to do in Homeless Nation. Go to Sacred Heart, get on my knees and open my arms to God, and Jesus and The Virgin Mary and all of my guardian angels and thank them from deep in my heart for watching over me for all of those scary days and nights and weeks and months.
Ditto for all of the angels at United Methodist Church and St. James and St. Andrews and Metropolitan Ministries, and they know who they are.
And Streetpuppy and Civilian angels I have come to know, and there were many of them, and they know who they are, too.
And they are all on the thank you part of the Streetpuppy Bucket List.
My next Bucket List will start out, "Return to Bangkok at least Once."
Ditto Rome.
Ok, on second thought, I'm going to put Bangkok and Rome down further on my new Bucket List and start with "Ride a horse bareback under a full moon at full gallop down a beach on the Eastern Shore of Ireland......Naked.
