What I Will (and Won't) Miss

Recently, the writer Nora Ephron died. She wrote the screenplays for movies like When Harry Met Sally and Julie and Julia. She also wrote memoirs, like I Feel Bad about My Neck. I found an old copy of the novel she wrote, Heartburn, in a used bookstore a few weeks ago, and I liked it so much that I've already read it twice. When I found out that she died, I felt sad, and a small, selfish part of me regretted that she wouldn't be writing anymore.

In her book I Remember Nothing, she made two lists: What I Will Miss and What I Won't Miss. I think she made those lists because it was a way of evaluating what was most important to her, and what didn't matter nearly as much. It made me think of what I would put on my own lists (other than the obvious things like loved ones).

What I Will Miss

   Writing fiction (and writing obsessive rants about why rude people should be made to live with Snooki or the cast of any season of The Bachelor for at least ten years)

   TV shows like 30 Rock and The Big Bang Theory that make me laugh and that make me think, Finally! Now people are finally starting to see that nerds are cool AND funny! (Is it bad to say that I'll miss TV? Am I supposed to say that I'll miss Shakespeare's plays instead? While I do enjoy watching his plays, reading his plays sometimes makes me feel like Wile E. Coyote right before the anvil drops on him. I feel like a bad English major because I still don't fully get iambic pentameter.)

    Chocolate

    Teaching

    Good books that I finish reading in two or three days because they're so engrossing that I can't stop reading them.

    Walking down South Michigan Avenue, with Grant Park on one side and the Loop on the other side. When I stand there and watch all the cars, buses, cabs, and people rushing around, I think, This is my city. This is home.


 What I Won't Miss

    Writer's block (and all the writers who apparently never suffer from writer's block, because they like to brag about how they never run out of ideas and how they finish (and publish) several stories a year. They also chide philistines like me who watch TV.)

    TLC shows about gypsies who get married (and divorced a month later, apparently) at age 16 (or younger) and 34-year-old virgins who live in their parents' basements and collect jars of belly button lint (I WISH I was making that one up. But I'm not, because I just watched Virgin Diaries on TLC. Now I'm kind of afraid to turn on my TV again.)

     The guilt I feel over eating too much chocolate and the subsequent trips to the gym to work off all those calories, where I envy all the women who look like they eat nothing but grapes.

      The excuses I get from students on why they didn't finish their homework, why they keep missing class, and why they really aren't vampires (yet they sleep all day, particularly during class on the occasions when they do show up).

       Bad books that make me shudder at the mediocre writing and all the
 cliches and that make me wish I was watching TLC shows instead.

       Being stuck on the El on the day of a Cubs game with crowds of rowdy Cubs fans who are all apparently hard of hearing because they yell a lot, even if they're standing right next to each other. Those often happen to be the days when it's ninety degrees out and the A/C on the train is broken. On days like that, I think, Maybe I should move to the suburbs. 

We'll miss you Nora...and your writing. 

What about you? What kinds of things will you miss? What kinds of things will you not miss?