After my last post, commenter Nathaniel mentioned that sleeping in hostels was definitely on his Murtaugh List. In case you’re not familiar with it and you don’t know how to use Google, the Murtaugh List comes from the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. Ted, the main character, catalogs all the things he’s passed the age for. (Murtaugh is an allusion to Danny Glover’s character in the Lethal Weapon series, whose tagline is “I’m too old for this shit”.)
It got me thinking what was on my list. There are only a few areas where Ted’s and my lists overlap. I won’t pull an all-nighter, I won’t eat a whole pizza in one sitting, and I won’t use a beer bong. But not because I don’t want to—only because those things would wreck me physically and/or spiritually.
He wouldn’t, but I would totally still go to a rave, though it would be for people-watching/blog-fodder purposes only.
Speaking of raves, let’s get into my list:
- Ecstasy. Always wanted to roll. Never did. Window closed. Don’t care.
- Piercings anywhere other than my ears. And maybe my nose. Am I too old for a nose ring?
- Climbing, as a friend said, any mountain that requires crampons.
- Finishing books I’m not interested in. I trudged through 350 pages of White Teeth by Zadie Smith. Took me about two months. Finally said fuck it and picked up Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. Done in 6 days. To crib a phrase from my college friend Dan, I know I should eat my literary vegetables, but I think I’ll require of myself what my sister does of her kids: a no-thank-you bite. Let’s call it fifty pages.
- Excessive primping/ladyscaping before a date*. I might put on some lip gloss. If the hedges are trimmed because I’ve been to the pool recently, well, lucky for you; I’m just not going out of my way.
- Related: thong underwear outside of the bedroom. If it’s coming off within 15 minutes, fine, but I’ll no longer tolerate recreational chafing.
*That’s assuming I’ll ever go on another date. At this juncture, it’s looking like no.
Now you go. What’s on your Murtaugh List?