Full on Empty

“Lamb3” by Jennifer Lamb

When the conversation turns to “bucket lists,” I look for the nearest sand pail to cover my head. Depending on who you ask, my bucket is either full of strange mollusks or pitifully empty.

My friend Orion challenged me to do “Thirty Before Thirty.” I should elect adventures to dispatch my twenties with panache. This is not a problem for someone who had his name legally changed from Joe to Orion. It is considerably more daunting when you conduct doctoral research before you purchase a vacuum.

Still, I would give it a try. Orion bade me to “dream big.” He personally had to buy storage units for his dreams. He acquired them more rapidly than he could rappel down cliffs, though he had done that on three continents and counting. He offered to help. We hit a language barrier. It is hard to collaborate when one person finds the word “bungee” applicable to daily life, and the other gets tingles when Dr. Ingleborg Huhn releases a new volume on apophatic theology.

Well, how about a road trip to meet Dr. Ingleborg Huhn? I could tell him how much he meant to me. Oh, he was in Dusseldorf? Even better! We could stay in a hostel with unsavory characters. We could attempt to be the least savory characters on the premises. Wouldn’t that be a toot?

If it would, then you may diagnose me as toot-avoidant. I apologized to Orion. I did not want to go to Dusseldorf. I did not even want to go to Conshohocken.

I wanted to curl like a prawn in my pink reading chair and consume three hundred pages in a single serving. I wanted to write a poem about my mother that would make her cry and then snort laughter like a wildebeest. I wanted to go on a scavenger hunt for glum strangers in the supermarket and interrupt their yogurt expeditions to tell them they are lovely. I wanted to attempt to stay upright despite the gale-force miracles that knock me on my bum hourly. A nontrivial percentage of these occur at the supermarket, come to think of it.

Being a celestial entity, Orion did not judge me. The man has a tattoo that says, “You Do You,” right under the one bearing the face of the Pioneer Woman, which he can explain.

But others, with tighter belts, push back. Stella is vested with the authority to collect bucket lists from fellow employees. It is “fun” to share them at the holiday party. It is a “bonding activity.” It is apparently inadmissible to list “experiencing all 40 known varieties of Cheez-It” or “bending the arc of the moral universe towards justice” on your bucket list.

Stella is exasperated with me. If I place one more scrunchie in the bucket, she is going to send brigands and highwaymen to deposit me in Madagascar, so I can have “fun.” To appease her, one year I wrote, “go to Paris with my mother.” You would think I had cured constipation or given birth to a new Muppet. Now Stella asks every year when my mother and I are going to Paris. Stella has been to Paris.

I have a few things I have to get to first. I need to determine whether my postal carrier’s eyes are the color of honey or nutmeg. It is incumbent upon me to memorize the lyrics of Salt n’ Pepa’s “Whatta Man,” such that I am prepared to perform it unabridged in the event of an emergency.

There is research to be done into my friends’ secret languages, to ensure maximum efficacy when I ambush them with affection. Speaking of which, Stella, go check your mailbox. You will find one pound of circus peanuts and a crocheted effigy of yourself, with eyes as green as shamrocks. Have you ever noticed that nobody’s eyes are not beautiful? No? Test me on this. Really, go do it.

This will keep her busy long enough that I can slip out the cat door, as long as my bucket isn’t too heavy to lift. That’s the problem. I may look like my ancestry is 51% homebody and 49% goofus. But I am only zealous for my zip code because it is overstuffed.

I mean it. In the course of one hour, I may encounter a peanut butter cookie, a cat walking a complete infinity sign around my ankles, and a Psalm. If I get on my bicycle, I will remember I am equipped with lungs and legs, which is enough to leave me dumbstruck for the rest of the day. My friend Lyle, age eighty-six, may send me rapid-fire text messages to ask if I need anything from Tajikistan. No, Tajikistan. No, Tajikistan. No, Target. Aw, heckin’ autocorrect.

I want more of this. Paris and Pulitzer Prizes are good pearls for other pails. Only let me have eternity in the overalls of the ordinary. It is inexhaustible. I am too astonished to leave.

About the Author

Angela Townsend (she/her) is the Development Director for a cat sanctuary, where she gets to bear witness to mercy for all beings. She is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and the 2024 winner of West Trade Review's 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Blackbird, Epiphany, and SmokeLong Quarterly, among others. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College and lives just outside Philadelphia with two empathetic cats.

about the artist

Jennifer Lamb is a student with the George Washington University working on her Master's in Public Health. She is working to improve her photography and writing skills, and continually looking for a new book to read. She has previously been published by Reservoir Road Literary Review, Dipity, and Gabby & Min Publications.