J is for Joe

When I wrote my original bucket list in 1997, it was in response to an article that a friend and I had read entitled something like 50 Things I Want to do Before I Die, or something close to that. My friend was upset that she didn't have that many items on her list. I told her that was a good thing: she had accomplished much, taken risks, gone for it, whatever it was.

I added a few things to my list over the next few years and wrote dates next to items that I accomplished. On January 1, 2001, I added Marry Joe (It couldn't hurt) to my bucket list.

Joe is my high school sweetheart from the late 1980s. After high school through college and early adulthood, we talked infrequently, catching up on each others' lives every now and again. In November of 2000, he actually called me after probably almost four years of very little communication with one another and asked me out on a date. By March, we were officially dating, and that October 2001 we were married.

Somehow I guess I knew that January that we were meant to be together, so why not add it to my bucket list. It makes all those teenaged scrawlings of Mrs. Joe Lastname seem not so silly now.

And marrying Joe didn't hurt it all.