I Never Thought I'd...

The fashion of the time is to look ahead to all the things we'd hoped to accomplish but have yet to do so. Whenever anyone mentions "bucket list" to me, I get the willies. To plan the rest of one's life in anticipation of dying seems to be an approach that is more than a bit morbid. It is almost like a grocery list: get everything the first time so you don't have to make another trip. Checking items off the "list" seems to be almost more important than the activities themselves. Of course, maybe I'm just odd, but instead of looking toward the bright light at the end of the tunnel, I prefer to look at each day in amazement that my life has included so many things that I never thought would ever happen to me: some good, some bad, but each experience has made me the person I am and contributed significantly to what I will take with me when I draw my last earthly breath.
So, in no particular order, here is my list of things that have occurred that I would never have thought possible:

I would never have believed a woman could put up with me for 40 years and counting...yet, she's still here, and I think we are more in love now than ever.

I would never have believed that the two things I liked the most as a teen would end up being my life's work in many ways: sports and music have taken me everywhere from a college scholarship to a teaching/coaching/tutoring career and 20 years on the radio.

As a dedicated baseball fan, I cannot believe I ever worked for the Green Bay Packers (yes, that is in the past tense).

It is still hard to believe that I survived an aneurysm...or that the tenacity of a local doctor would prove to be the critical element in finding the anomaly. In my experience, there has never been another one like Dr. Mark Weisse.

I would never have thought to travel so widely, and I owe it to various exchanges students/teachers and the travels of my own children who introduced me to wonderful places throughout the world.

I never believed I would actually be 60. As Mickey Mantle once said, 'If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

I never, ever dreamed I would run the Boston Marathon.

I would not have thought I would complete almost a thousand entries in a blog.

I would have never, ever thought I would care about a social network OR start a Twitter account.

I never thought I would live to see the day that political parties cared so much more about their electability than the people whom they might serve.

And so it goes...