Getting A Kick From a Bucket List
It was a surprisingly emotional moment - by which I mean I was surprised at how moved I felt. There is a middle aged woman (not me, but could have been in a parallel life) standing up in front of a couple of hundred people in a theatre, holding a microphone.
This, she tells us, has been on her bucket list for years. Giving comedy a go, telling a story, trying to make a room full of strangers laugh. Something about the way she says that makes the room love her. It’s not everyday you get to watch somebody fulfil a dream.
Stephanie is the final performer in the Sunday afternoon Gong Show on a trans-Tasman cruise. There has been a comedy workshop the day before when tips were shared (“make it relevant, connect with your audience”) and rules were laid down (family friendly language and no jokes about marginalised groups).
By showtime, there were a stream of contestants vying to wow the judges (four professional comedians) and beat the gong. There literally is a huge brass gong hanging on stage, and a fifth comedian wields a drumstick with more mercy than we judges would have sometimes liked.
Though it is all good fun. Men tell collections of one-liners - some they’ve heard, others they’ve written - or shaggy-dog stories that involve sheds and pubs and wives. Women tell stories from their lives.
There are also two young brothers with enviable amounts of self-confidence. I’ve been doing this job for over thirty years and the self-doubt I feel can still be crippling some days, and I find myself wishing for the daring-do of a ten year old boy.
Stephanie doesn’t win the competition, but wins hearts with her true story about being the mother of triplets - the things people say, the things she’s said back.
You get the feeling some of the other competitors have done this before and will do it again, but for Steph it just needed to happen this one time. A mighty big tick on her Bucket List.
It feels like that term - this list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket - has been around forever but it was popularised relatively recently, though “kicking the bucket” as a euphemism for death goes back a couple of hundred years.
What really is fascinating is that our wish lists - given urgency by age or a diagnosis - so often involve things that are terrifying.
Sure, there will be “eat truffles in Provence” or “see Dolly Parton live” on a Bucket List, but there is a definite lean towards the things that scare you. Skydive, swim with sharks, somehow risk life and limb. Because, I guess, once you feel the future telescope in, you know its now or never. Plus there’s less time to suffer consequences.
I totally admire Stephanie’s timing to tick it off when she did - a cruise ship’s Gong Show is the ideal situation. You’re in front of a tight group of friends and family who love you no matter how this goes, and a large number of strangers you are unlikely to ever see again.
It really is worth noting, this almost universal enthusiasm for doing a scary thing, the thrill we get from facing a fear. I especially love discovering someone’s dream is to have crack at the thing I do almost everyday. Though, for the record, I am terrified of other people’s day jobs. Please don’t ask me to run a restaurant or drive a truck.