Need Some Help People!!!!

Hey everyone,

If you could, please tell me what is on your bucket list. What would you like to do before you die? I need your answers to complete this list for Jack:

1. Go to the movies with friends 2. Have a best friend 3. Go to college 4. Cross the street 5. Be part of a group 6. Live alone 7. Hold a job 8. Have a sleepover 9. Have a drink 10. Text message 11. Vote 12. Buy my own clothes 13. Have a kid 14. Drive 15. Get married 16. Tell how someone is feeling 17. Tell when someone is teasing 18. Have the doctor talk to me 19. Look people in the eye 20. Tell a joke to make people laugh 21. Have a girlfriend 22. Make a whole room laugh 23. Have an iPad 24. Go on a bike trip 25. Be in a regular class 26. Learn Karate 27. Climb a mountain 28. Travel on an airplane 29. Go to the beach 30. Help a sick person 31. Build a model car 32. Complete a math problem 33. Complete a project I started 34. Raise my hand in class 35. Have the most songs on my Ipod 36. Make it in the yearbook 37. Join a sports team 38. Run a mile 39. Live to be 100 40. Write my own story 41. Go sledding 42. Have a brother or sister 43. Make a youtube video 44. Have a facebook 45. Stay at home by myself 46. Use a stove 47. Have a surprise party 48. Ride a horse 49. Eat dessert for breakfast 50. Learn to dance

51. Go to a school dance 52. Go to a football game 53. Have a REAL girlfriend 54. Be a movie extra 55. Have a conversation 56. Teach someone something 57. Swim with dolphins 58. Ride an elephant 59. Learn to snowboard 60. Get straight As 61. Make Mom and Dad proud 62. Be on t.v. 63. Win the lottery 64. Get picked first 65. Be famous 66. Set a world record 67. Live at the beach 68. Work in a restaurant 69. Own a nice watch 70. Own a car 71. Buy a car 72. Go camping 73. Be a Boy Scout 74. Go fishing 75. Go on a submarine 76. Go to a casino 77. Watch a movie marathon 78. Meet a famous person 79. Play video games 80. Save a life 81. Donate blood 82. Go to Australia 83. Go to the Alps 84. Read Harry Potter 85. Die of old age 86. Get a cell phone 87. Meet the President 88. Go to Disney World 89. Fly a plane 90. Have a brother or sister 91. Dye my hair 92. Have long hair 93. Graduate with honors 94. Join a club 95. Be part of a group 96. Go to camp 97. Have no limitations 98. Go to space 99. Do a cartwheel 100. Go to Africa

The Canal

She casually mentions one hundred dollars. You do the math in your head and realize your mistake. All of this while staring down the road like a horse with blinders. The hysteria starts. Usually there is just a twinge of annoyance. Today it is full-blown hyperventilating speech. “I-don’t-have-that-why-wasn’t-I-notified-there-is-no-way-I-can-pay-that.” All on the way to your barely-rent paycheck that eats up eighty dollars in gas per week. You panic and hang up on her while she is explaining your “options.” Later you’ll feel guilty for that.

The steering wheel is shaking. Your shoulders start to ache with stiffness. Your chin starts to vibrate and without sobbing three tears start to fall from each eye. You can only stare unblinkingly as your exit passes and the silence before your sobs stretches on. Only once you’ve made three wrong turns to get back on the highway does it start.

It’s like a hiccup with an asthma attack attached. You choke back nonexistent vomit as your glasses start to fog up from the hotness of your tears. Your shaking hands move them once to your head, then to the seat, then as the sun sears your pupils back on your nose. Then back to your head as they fog. You begin to grasp at the wheel, your planner, your phone, your glasses. You can barely see.

You drive at twenty miles per hour until you get to your parallel parking space, without accident or incident. You wipe and wipe and sob and sob but there is no end to the stream of tears.

Notice that your nose isn’t stuffed up. Remember when you realized the only way to effectively cry is upright, otherwise you can’t breathe. Remember that all the times your eyes were red-rimmed and wet, no one noticed you were upset but you, and if they did no one mentioned it. Bringing personal problems wot work is not your style. Having personal problems is your style.

Think about calling in sick and driving home in the non-stop traffic to sleep some more, but think of the people who have now seen your car, the money you stand to earn, the buoyancy of having colleagues, and the fact that people don’t notice and don’t comment on red-rimmed eyes (but perhaps assume drugs are involved or a lack of sleep). Walk, head down with avoidant eyes, to what is, at least, an open door.

Caught - A Short

Were you, perhaps, born in a time that you were not meant for? Pushed out under a sun that was too bright for your wise eyes or too old for your new perspective. Then you can be a writer. Then you can wend the pages that are what you see. Your readers will "ooh" and "aah" at your new fangled ideas or your twist on the past and they will wonder who comes up with this stuff. Creativity is only living in a world that doesn't understand you. Only seeing shadows of a better time everywhere.

Holding On - A Short

My boyfriend holds my hand like he’s trying to break my fingers. He has to be on the bottom, “Because it’s warm,” he says. And then he curls my fingers around into his fist.

I like to believe that appendages are meant to be inert. That my hand it meant to be palm up with just the slightest curl. That it should feel like floating.

When holding hands, palm side down is fine, like a protective covering over the other hand. I like to sandwich too. One hand cupping his palm and the other covering his knuckles. Just enough to rub my thumb over his veins, tense and twisting around to squeeze my fingers.

Breath(e)

The last one was tacks. A whole bunch of tacks clicking together in my mouth, not stabbing me but filling it up and making it hard to breath. Pulling them out, scraping them off my tongue just caused more to take their places. Eventually I start to panic, trying hard to fill my mouth with air. When I open my eyes it is like coming up from water. I’ve been holding my breath. I gasp and start and fear more sleep.

Perhaps I said something biting, tactless. Or perhaps it was tactful but inappropriate. Maybe I just hurt someone’s feelings or got mad for no reason. If my dreams are another world, it is a cruel, cruel alternate universe.

I used to wear those invisalign retainers to bed, but I stopped because every night they would stack up like chinese dolls and I would spend dream hours pulling them out one by one. Knowing it was a dream, I would try and try, assuming that eventually I would pull out the actual one in my mouth and the panic would end. I usually woke up with my teeth clenched together and again, holding my breath. That’s when I stopped wearing them.

Then it was sand. Dirt. Something I scraped out of my mouth with my fingernails. I tried to get it out of the back of my throat, the inside of my cheeks, the spaces between my teeth. I’d force myself to breathe in my dream, but it was shallow and ineffective. I’d try to close my mouth around the substances and breath from my nose, but there was too much of the stuff. I’d awake with a sharp intake of breath and a shot up in bed.

The worst time it was just my tongue. It would swell and swell and swell until it was sticking out of my mouth, blocking my airway. I would try to bite it, or poke at it with my fingers to make room for air. My nose would feel clogged as well. These times could be a clear analogy of me talking too much or sticking my foot in my mouth. Waking up, realizing you’ve been clenching your jaw and not breathing, makes you want an explanation. I would search through every rotten thing I’ve ever done, looking for the words that caused the dream. I would stifle it.

Mostly I would just breathe. When I get angry, I try to breathe. When I’m arguing with someone, I try to breathe. Revenge will come to me if I say those words. If I’m impulsive. It is amazing how pleasant of a thing breathing is when your body revolts against you in the night. And you don’t know why. So perhaps you just stop talking.