- Butcher one’s own Hartebeest using only a penknife and pocket-comb
- Hand-roll the perfect cigar; place in a Lucite case to be smoked upon one’s deathbed
- Master the art of single-tear cry
- Master the art of removing a front-clasp bra with one’s toes
- Learn to make the deadliest cocktail, the Dank and Steamy
- Serve a Dank and Steamy to Norman Mailer’s ghost
- Defend a lady friend’s honor by employing a rear naked choke
- Learn the difference between a fedora and a trilby
- And also a homburg, why not
- Spend at least one year’s salary on a bottle of Scotch
- Put one’s faithful dog of twenty-three years down, but only after staring long into its eyes and reaching an understanding
- Write an essay on euthanizing the dog and sell it to the Paris Review
- Learn how to say “humidor” in twelve languages
- Climb every mountain, ford every stream; but you know, in a manly way, not the way that a nun would
- Locate and purchase the car in which you were conceived
- Rebuild transmission of said car
- and present it to your dying father as a gift upon the anniversary of your mother’s death
- Sit a while in absolute silence in the passenger seat as your father runs his trembling, spotted hands over the walnut burl dashboard before switching on the radio
- Listen to “Reeling in the Years”
- Wait, that might be a little too on the nose, let’s make that “My Old School”
- Upon the death of your father, drink the bottle of Scotch in a single sitting and crash the car into the first tree you successfully climbed as a child
- Fix car and sell on EBay for a profit
- Learn to express one’s feelings by not saying or doing anything
- Also, no writing anything down, that’s cheating
- Seriously
- One more? Um, read Moby-Dick?
