Most people have a bucket list of places they want to see before they die. I have a list too, but true to form, it’s a list of places I have no desire to visit.
Let’s start with the easy stuff. Asia. That pretty well covers it. I have absolutely no desire to travel to Asia, whether it’s Japan, China, Thailand, Cambodia or Vietnam. Especially Vietnam, as I would continually be scanning the crowd for a 57-something man, wondering if he was the 11 year old boy who tried to kill my brother in the war.
India, Pakistan and all of the Middle East is out too. Don’t care to see any of it. Ancient cultures, for whatever reason, don’t fascinate me and standing around in the heat looking at centuries-old structures in dire need of long overdue maintenance just doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time. Not to mention the abject poverty in some regions. Too Peace Corps for me.
I can’t really say there’s any place in South America I care to see either. I don’t have anything against South America, mind you, but I compare it to seeing Disneyland and still thinking you need to see Disney World. Yes, there’s Columbialand and Ecuadorland, but I’ve already seen Mexicoland and Hondurasland, along with Belizeland. How much difference could there possibly be?
Oh, and Africa. Sorry, forgot about Africa. See the India, Middle East entry above.
That leaves most of Europe, Central America, maybe Russia (if I was drunk enough), Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean and the Pacific Isles. I think I’m good with this list. I can’t see everything with the time remaining and I still have a lot of islands to check off before I worry too much about anything on my anti-bucket list. Geez, the Bahamas alone have something like 700 islands and I’ve only knocked off three so far.
I have such a list of cities and states, too. No, I don’t discriminate when it comes to figuring out places I have no desire to see.
Let’s start with the states: North Dakota, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Utah, Arkansas, Wyoming, Alabama, Vermont, West Virginia, Missouri, Nebraska and Indiana come to mind. Not because there’s anything wrong with them, I’m sure they are nice places. No, really! But if I have only so much time and money, would I choose any of these over, say, Puerto Rico or Bora Bora?
Now for the cities. I don’t feel a need to go to Los Angeles again. Been there a couple times. That was enough. Same with Chicago. Atlanta: Never been there and feel no need to go there. The same is true for Philadelphia.
And New York is definitely on my no-travel list. Oh, I can hear the cries right now. What? Are you crazy? How could you not want to go to New York?
For starters, I’m not interested in seeing anything there. Yes, I know the Statue of Liberty is in NYC. But I can only assume that it’s the same as seeing Mt. Rushmore. I saw Mt. Rushmore. I stood there, looked at it, marveled for a moment, took a couple of photos and that was it. Been there, seen it, let’s move on.
The World Trade Center? I didn’t even know what it was when it was struck. I had to ask my mom on the phone as I turned on the television. Broadway? How does one write the word, Nyick. Not a huge live theater type of guy. And the crowds? If I want crowds I’ll go to the Magic Kingdom on the 4th of July. I’m not very crowd-friendly under the best of circumstances. Why would I do well on the streets of New York, a people-pinball machine?
The fact that I have no desire to visit New York seems strange to me, largely because of the four people I dated post-divorce, three were New Yorkers. This could make sense, given that I was living in Florida at the time, which is really just South New York. But I even found one here in Washington State, which is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Of course, each one of them thought I was nuts for not wanting to visit New York or even New York State. Maybe that’s part of the problem. They named a city after the state. That would be akin to me living in Washington, Washington. Yes, that sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it? But New Yorkers find it charming.
But, as I came to find out, all of New York is not equal. New Yorkers (the city residents) speak very poorly of New Yorkers (those who live in other parts of the state). They speak of New York (the state) like it’s a strange land of hicks and hickvilles. I’m sure it’s nothing like Eastern Washington.
Perhaps it’s just the hubris New Yorkers have, as if God created New York just before he took the weekend off during that busy week known as The Creation. When fellow New Yorkers meet, they talk about the cross-streets they grew up on, like 100th and 27th and then compare their neighborhood bagel shops. I’m not making this up. I just experienced this recently – three New Yorkers, all dropping cross streets like it was a normal thing to do in the real world.
If that were the case, then everyone in Western Washington would know where 28th and Aberdeen is. That’s where I grew up. Still thinking? How about Kennydale? Still lost? Renton. And if you’re still lost we don’t need to be the good friends you think we are.
The truth of the matter is, I don’t really care at all about New York. If it fell into the sea tomorrow, I think we’d be just fine. True, we’d have to postpone the Tony’s, at least until Chicago took over theater. But we could build another Statue of Liberty in Washington D.C, which kind of makes sense since most of the nation’s historical landmarks are there, or so I hear.
Maybe I should visit it sometime. I hear it has some stuff.
In the Emerald City, in the other Washington,
– Robb