31 Oct Before I Die I Want to __________
We stopped at an ice cream shop in a tiny town in Colorado. The ice cream tasted extra good on this sunny day, and we enjoyed our waffle cones filled with creamy deliciousness while sitting outside.
The exterior wall of the ice cream shop was painted black with chalkboard paint, and “Before I die I want to _____________” was printed hundreds of times, with blank lines for people to write in their desires with chalk. A bucket was placed near the wall, filled with big pieces of sidewalk chalk. A plaque read that the wall was a community art project.
My eyes scanned the wall. One person wanted a horse. Another wanted to hike Camino de Santiago. Two people wanted to learn to play the piano. Lots of people wrote “poop” on the line. It’s not clear why that one came up so much. Perhaps it was on people’s mind after eating gigantic scoops of ice cream. Another person wrote ICE CREAM in large white letters (More? I thought. Sort of gluttonous, now that I knew how large the single scoop was. Or, perhaps they stopped to write before going inside to get their scoop.)
My eyes continued to scan. Different colors of chalk. Different sizes and styles of printing. Some erased as if the author wanted to write their desire, imprint it in memory and then erase it to keep it personal. My eyes landed on one written in blue: “…change my story” it read. A large, perfectly symmetrical blue period finished the sentence.
I thought a lot about the person who wrote this. The person who picked up the blue chalk, approached the wall, and boldly concluded a chapter that wasn’t working. The person who made the deliberately large period to end the sentence—punctuation to signify the end. It continues to bring me joy to think of this person who decided, perhaps after a scoop of chocolate ice cream, that the story of their life would have a new ending.