I will eat at a restaurant alone, as long as I can tell a friend to show up ten minutes after I’m seated and join me because why not, since we’re both there by ourselves.
I will invite neighbors I don’t know to come over and hang out on my patio, as long as they thank me and decline because they’re going to the dentist and then they need to pick up some dry cleaning and maybe buy their kids some shoes.
I will approach someone with whom I’ve had an argument and make things right between us, as long as they admit my points were stronger and better than theirs and they also give me credit for being the bigger person because I was the one who made the first move.
I will overcome my fear of flying by traveling by plane, as long as I can take with me a registered nurse who will inject me with a moderate sedative and midazolam before the plane leaves the gate, and who will then ensure that the drugs wear off as the plane is coming to a final stop at my destination.
I will give a speech in front of an audience, as long as the topic of my speech is how I was part of a drug trial for a pill that not only causes self-consciousness and stage fright to fade completely away, but also fills a person with the desire to tell all about it in great and eloquent detail.
I will master my reluctance to use the telephone as long as I can make a list of all the people I should contact along with their phone numbers, and then text every one of them.
I will choose a musical instrument, take lessons, rent a hall and give a recital for family and friends, as long as the recital date is carefully chosen to coincide with the worst snowstorm to hit the midwestern United States in a hundred years.
I will learn a new game and teach that game to a group of children, as long as the game includes at least two of the following: A hopping rabbit, a Lollipop Woods, secret passages, a mousetrap, Triple Word Scores, an extra turn for rolling doubles, a game token shaped like an iron, plastic hippopotamus heads, blockades, and an Idaho potato.
I will hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine as long as hot showers are provided every ten miles and shelters are equipped with beds, clean linens, and flush toilets. Kiosks filled with razors, shampoo/conditioner, and dry skin cream should dot the trail. The kiosks should also be phone recharging stations.
I will overcome my fear of bungee jumping by allowing experts to put me in an ankle harness, after which I will fall headfirst from Washington’s High Steel Bridge into a canyon for the length of the cord, and when the cord recoils, I’ll go with it, boinging up and down and up again, as long as… as long as…
No. No, I won’t overcome my fear of bungee jumping. It’s a perfectly healthy, normal fear and I won’t give it up. You go bungee jumping if you want to. And leave me alone.