Never Have I Ever...

...felt so completely out of sync with the world as I do at this writing.

I heard that phrase - never have I ever - during an NPR discussion of the movie 'Us' and there was a bit of a pause.. a slight chuckle...then chat continued about the film.

The phrase stuck with me so I toyed with using it as the focus for this column. What have I never... done, or eaten, or seen, or said, or typed, or regretted, or missed, or heard... and want to put on a bucket list. As you can sense, I have had some difficulty narrowing to a starting point.

Then I remembered that pregnant pause in the morning's radio show. What did that mean, I wondered. As more of us are doing these days, I asked Google.

Google has put me in the corner to think long and hard about my ignorance. It's a drinking game? One I had not heard of. Then Google filled me in on the link that phrase has with pop culture... movies, television shows, even a hip hop song. I recognized a few of the loooong list of titles: Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, (I have never watched either), Big Bang Theory, (watched occasionally but must have missed that episode), and DeGrassi, (which I discovered does NOT refer to a show by or about astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson).

Pop culture and I are estranged. I don't see reconciliation in the future because (1) I no longer own a television and (2) I rarely go to the movies, even solo. Now 'Us' is on my list of one to see, though it is classified as a horror film. Might as well kill two birds with one stone before I am Unfriended by Big Brother and lose my spot in The Real World. I do have a life without pop culture, but I'll be nice and visit now and then. I might learn something. I am a curious still-breathing soul that has a life, even if barely recognized as such by most of the universe. Am I alone out there?

When I finished this, I watched a trailer of "Us" and realized it is not a movie I could watch. "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" is more my speed.