The Kicked-Over-Bucket List: Things I Want to Do After I Die

1. Become fireworks. (This is on you, loved ones.)

2. Get on the Google News Alert for “ghost.”

3. Ride Disney’s Haunted Mansion (I had to be escorted out when I was twelve because it was “too scary,” but I think I could handle it if I was already dead).

4. Possess the body of a famous person while they’re doing a talk show. Maybe Ellen, maybe just for the dancing portion.

5. Spy on my ex-boyfriends’ great-grandchildren, speculate about how much better looking our great-grandchildren would have been.

6. Window shop.

7. As part of an iron-clad will, make all my grandchildren change their names to “[Their name]edith.”

8. Use a medium to convince my family that I had a hidden treasure, but leave said medium’s body without revealing a location.

9. Switch the hair dyes in a Dallas-area salon for Manic Panics.

10. Stare out from the eyes of the Statue of Liberty.

11. Ask Mary Toft how those rabbits felt and what she thinks of the modern celebrity industrial complex.

12. Get a day dedicated to me in a town I’ve never been to, possibly through ballot-stuffing.

13. Read Infinite Jest.

14. Go to Denver, figure out what to do there.

15. Uphold tradition: moan, wail, rattle chains.

16. Show up in the mirror when a little girl says “Bloody Mary” three times at her first sleepover.

17. Have my picture taken in the form of a glowing orb or hard-to-discern swipe.

18. Inspire a horror film.

19. Live on in the hearts and minds of the people.

20. Skydive.

Meredith Haggerty works in publishing, internets here, and never, ever regrets setting up that Google News Alert for “ghost.”