Things I Want to See in My Lifetime
World peace? An honest politician? A flying car? A second season of Firefly? Being able to retire? A printer that works?
Those are all worthy — though extremely unlikely — goals. But I want something else.
The first “thing I want to see in my lifetime” was to have a published book. Now I’ve done that. Twice. Check, check.
Another “bucket list” item was to see the Amber Room in St. Petersburg. The Amber Room is a recreation of a room in the Catherine Palace lined and decorated entirely with amber, weighing over six tons. The original Amber Room was constructed in the 18th century; later, it was disassembled and disappeared during World War II. It’s now considered lost forever, though there are always theories about how the pieces are on a sunken ship somewhere or in boxes stacked in an abandoned Nazi bunker.
Now that’s pretty much out of the question, what with U.S. relations with Russia, combined with my lack of funds for taking such an elaborate vacation. I’ll just have to be satisfied with my collection of amber jewelry and trinkets.
(Amber is prehistoric, fossilized tree resin. There are sometimes flies, mosquitos, or other bugs trapped in it, which makes the amber worth considerably more. The best-known varieties are clear golden in color, with shades from pale honey to nearly brown. There are also green amber and cherry amber, but I don’t care much for them. But I digress.)
No, what I really want to see in my own lifetime is a quotation from me on a t-shirt or a coffee mug. I know that I can order them one-off printed with anything I like (and I’ve had my book covers made into t-shirts and earrings), but what I want is to have someone else produce and wear them. I want to be in an airport and see someone wearing that shirt. I want to walk into an office and see someone drinking out of that mug.
Unfortunately, I don’t really have any sayings worth saying. Perhaps my most well-known one is “If my aunt had wheels, she’d be a tea cart.” That could, I suppose, appear on a t-shirt with a nice weird graphic of an aunt with a tea cart. My other signature saying is, “Sad, but true. True, but sad.” That’s short enough to fit on a mug, but a little nonspecific for anyone to take as their preferred slogan.
Of course, there’s also “DBF&P,” which stands for “Drop Back Five and Punt.” This is a phrase my husband and I use often because we’ve had to do it so often in our lives. Maybe the t-shirt would read “DPF&P*” with the translation as a footnote. I have plenty of obscure t-shirts and mugs (and shot glasses). Maybe someone else collects them too.
Most of the quotes from my blogs are too long for a mug, or even for a t-shirt. For example, “Teachers are the artists and architects of the future. We owe them a little more slack and a lot more support.” Readability would be a problem. It seems out of the question for me to be both meaningful and pithy.
Another thing I would like to see is one of my Facebook posts going viral. So far, I’ve had no luck there, either. I pass along plenty of other people’s posts, but almost no one passes along mine. Of course, that’s likely because most of the things I post are personal — interesting (at least to me) things that are happening in my life and funny things my husband or cats do. Apparently, our little family is insufficiently amusing.
The other day, I did download a meme generator (called, cleverly, Meme Generator) in hopes of putting a novel caption on an existing photo. The thing is, I didn’t want to use the too-familiar ones like “Disloyal Boyfriend” or “Change My Mind,” and again I have the problem of thinking up a clever caption short enough to fit. So here’s what I came up with as a trial run. This is my husband in a bar in Ireland. I haven’t gotten up the nerve to post it yet.
You can help make one of my dreams come true. Vote on whether I should post this meme (keeping in mind my husband doesn’t have Facebook) or not.
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