What’s On Your Bucket List?

What is something you have always wanted to do?  Maybe you have always dreamt of climbing Mount Everest or you’ve wanted to try skydiving.  Or maybe your dream is to spend an entire day at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

These are the type of things that you might say are on your “bucket list,” or the list of things you want to do before you die.  We have all thought of something to add to our bucket list, but do we know why it is called a bucket list?

That is what I would like to find out in today’s Wonder Why Wednesday.

When I Googled “why is it called a bucket list” I expected to read something about the ancient Egyptians and how they used to write on buckets because they didn’t have paper and buckets were easier to write on than cave walls or chariots.  I anticipated a complicated answer that really didn’t make much sense.

Boy was I wrong.

Turns out that the phrase “bucket list” is derived from the term “to kick the bucket,” which means to die.

That makes sense.  If “kick the bucket” means someone has died, then I guess it is appropriate to have a list of things to do before you kick the bucket be called a “bucket list.”

I’ve heard the term “kick the bucket” before, but I never would have guessed that was where the phrase “bucket list” came from.  Who knew that buckets were so closely associated with dying?

Funny how the simplest explanations are sometimes the last ones we think of.

What are some of the things you have checked off your bucket list?  Let me know in the comments section below.

 

 

Thanks to Michelle Meiklejohn & FreeDigitalPhotos.net for the photo used on the homepage.