Forget that Bucket List, make a F**k It List

Apparently we should get married, spawn the obligatory two-and-a-half children - a boy, a girl and one other - by age 40, make our first R10-million by 45 and retire by age 50. This is so that we can then spend the rest of our lives travelling to the Taj Mahal and Fela Kuti's shrine in Lagos, attending the Rio Carnival, climbing Kilimanjaro, visiting the Louvre and ticking off all the other items on our bucket lists.

Well, at least according to Hollywood screenwriters. For me, this notion that one needs to have a bucket list is an absurdity of the highest order.

Some time last week, one Karin Panaino Petersen, who is a Facebook friend, authored a post about the existence of a different list. An anti-bucket list, if you wish. It is called the F**k It List.

Depending on who you speak to, it could refer to things on your bucket list that you've tried, only to realise that you actually don't want to do them. Alternatively (as is the case with me), it could simply mean things that exist on the garden variety bucket lists of most folks that you literally couldn't give a rat's tit about doing.

Take climbing Kilimanjaro. I lack the words to describe just how uninterested I am in summiting the mountain. If you gave me an option between climbing Kilimanjaro and subjecting myself to a five-day marathon of recordings of former president Zuma's written speeches, my only request would be five packets of Sweet Chili Doritos, regular nature breaks, concentrated Red Bull and an electric cattle prod to shock myself into keeping awake.

I know many people who speak with great yearning about one day going to watch a Champion's League final. Or the FA Cup final at Wembley. You can miss me with that nonsense. Especially after the hours of my life I wasted at FNB Stadium during the 2010 Fifa World Cup final, frozen to the core, drinking that donkey piss called Budweiser with nipple stands. I remember wishing I was at home watching it on the telly, under a warm blanket with a bourbon.

So, no, football finals are definitely on my F**k It List.

Running the Comrades Marathon features a lot on bucket lists. I have three words for you. Are. You. Crazy? I can hardly run from my garage to the gate without running out of breath and collapsing in a heap of exhaustion that requires a 90-minute Swedish massage the following day.

And I know how my brain works. I can see myself at the start, at Pietermaritzburg City Hall. I'd probably start the race. I might even make it to the McDonald's on the corner of Chief Albert Luthuli Street and the appropriately named Burger Street.

What I do know is that, irrespective of how well I'd prepared, I would never make it all the way to Alan Paton Street in Scotsville. One of the many voices in my head would talk to me in the voice of Louis Gossett jnr in those Windhoek ads: "What are you doing, Ndumiso? Wouldn't you rather spend this glorious day drinking beer at the Durban beachfront?" And then I'd drive to Durban instead.

I have never been to the Louvre in Paris despite visiting that city. It's also on my F**k It List. Yeah, sure, I have an appreciation for its historical significance to the now-defunct French monarchy. But without going there, I know exactly what it would feel like being there. I'd wander around trying to look interested and intelligent while wondering why I was walking around a big house with paintings of dead Frenchmen.

Also on my F**k It List are bungee jumping, skydiving, paragliding or any other "sport" that involves hurtling towards the ground - something I have called "crazy white people BS". This is about my notoriously rotten luck. I'm convinced that it would end with me looking like road kill at the bottom of the Bloukrans Bridge.

The same goes for engaging in nookie on the beach. I don't like sand in my behind. Or joining the mile-high club. I bet my attempt would coincide with the exact moment someone hijacked the plane, culminating in my standing in the aisle with my pants around my ankles, trying to cover my nethers with my hands.

I like to believe that the reason for my aversion to bucket lists is that I don't suffer from FOMO. I suspect, though, that I might have successfully painted myself as having the curiosity and adventurous spirit of bottom-feeding plankton. But I'll be living, breathing plankton. And at least I won't suffer the irony of kicking the bucket in pursuit of ticking bucket lists.