Showing posts with label airplane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label airplane. Show all posts

Monday, July 8, 2013

News from the bucket list

There's another story in the news about someone skydiving and checking it off their "Bucket List."http://www.local12.com/news/local/story/Two-Local-Paraplegics-Skydive-From-13-500-Feet/edn9aifvi0ylJxOHi28BHw.cspx


If the media is to be  believed, every person on earth has an overwhelming desire to plummet to earth. News, movies, songs.

I just don't get it. I never will, so don't bother explaining. It's something I truly do not wish to understand. If the epitome of your life is to do something expensive and foolhardy, then I'm not sure I know you at all. Or want to.

I blame the media for a lot of this foolishness. Some 97 year old woman, once upon a time, fulfilled her lifelong desire to jump from an airplane, and the story was an immediate hit.
This was probably in 1934, when airplanes and 97 year old women were rarely paired. There was no instant news, no sharing everywhere, and only her friends knew, even after word got out.

In those days, skydiving was news.
97 year olds were news.

Nowadays, there are skydiving clubs around every city, and 97 is peppy if elderly. Neither item is news.

But, for some reason, this is consistently treated as "NEWS."

You want to know about bucket lists?
Visit a nursing home.
Visit the oncology floor in the local city hospital.
Heck, visit a veterinarian, where pets are freed from pain as loving companions linger near.

None of these people are mourning the fact that they didn't get to jump out of sn airplane.
None of them are regretting that they never jumped from an airplane.
None of them see that as a legacy to be treasured in any sense.

There's a saying about nobody having his tombstone engraved with "I wish I had worked more"
No one has asked that be put in his obituary.
I'm pretty sure no one has engraved, "I wish I had jumped from an airplane."
I'm pretty sure no one has put NOT-skydiving in a loved one's obituary

Please stop treating this as a legitimate news story.
It isn't.