10 Things to Do Before I Die

Prologue: The Story of My Death
My name is Ted Burger. I am sixteen years old. I am an only child. I live in New York City.

I will not live to see seventeen.

What else? Let's see. . . . My voice is pretty deep but it squeaks sometimes, like an old rusty bicycle. I have curly brown hair. "Brillo pad hair," in my best friend Mark's words. I am tall and skinny. My fingers are, too. They look like twigs. "Musician's fingers," says my guitar teacher, Mr. Puccini. (Translation: "Girlie fingers.") I'm good at blowing stuff off. I have a hard time admitting certain things to myself. According to my parents, I have a "nutty, Borscht Belt sense of humor!" (I include the exclamation point because they tend to speak at a high-pitched volume.) What they mean is that I'm a third-rate clown, but they aren't really ones to talk.

This is the story of my death.

It starts the way all my stories do, as a bad joke whose tragic punch line somehow ends up signifying my whole life. Or death, in this case. Ha! Ha . . . ha . . . okay, maybe my parents are right. Maybe I am a clown. I don't have the greatest comic timing. I rarely instigate-bad things simply happen to me. Pie-in-the-face sorts of things. But don't just take my word for it. Consider the fortune I received on my sixteenth birthday (ironically, my last birthday ever, although I didn't know it at the time) when my parents took me to the Hong Phat Noodle House-and I swear I am not making this up:

You will never have much of a future if you look
for it in a cookie at a Chinese Restaurant. J

My mom's fortune promised a lifetime of infinite happiness. My dad's, a lifetime of wealth and fulfillment. When I complained to the waiter about mine, he told me that I should be pleased. "It's true, young man," he said with a smile. "One should never look for one's destiny in a dessert item. One should look for it in experience."

I agreed, sure-but deep down, I still felt sort of gypped. I asked for another one. He refused. Hong Phat policy is one fortune cookie per customer, period.

The real punch line is that I don't even like Chinese food all that much. I like french fries. But my parents forced me to go there because they said that I needed to learn how to use chopsticks. "It's a skill that will make you part of an important demographic, dear!" Mom insisted. That's a direct quote. To this day, I have no idea what she means. (I never learned how to use chopsticks, either.) My parents work together at the same advertising firm, so they talk a lot about stuff like "important demographics!" It's pretty much all they talk about. Maybe one day I will understand their baffling pronouncements. I would if I weren't doomed to an early grave, that is.

Speaking of which, the story of my death also starts at a restaurant. It starts at the Circle Eat Diner with Mark and his girlfriend, Nikki. I can't imagine it starting any other way. Everything starts at the Circle Eat Diner with Mark and Nikki, at least everything that matters . . . everything that happens during those sublime, BS-filled hours when the three of us laugh and rant and eat, the hours just after school and before I have to run back home to Mom and Dad.

Okay, that's an exaggeration. I rarely have to run home to Mom and Dad. They aren't around very often. They take a lot of business trips. All of which is a long way of saying that I spend more time hanging out at the Circle Eat Diner with Mark and Nikki than I probably should.

Much more.

You'll see what I mean shortly. The story of my death has a very dramatic, pie-in-the-face beginning.

A Very Active Inner Life
Spring break has just started. No classes for a whole week! Woo-hoo! It's one of those rare gorgeous afternoons in Manhattan when the sky is swimming-pool blue and the breeze is crisp. There's no humidity at all.