Worse still, I give Spike an allowance (Dog knows where it all goes), and I still have to buy his food. And I do all the cooking - no thumbs puts him in a bad mood with the packaging and can opener.
Dan
The first thing I would want to do is find our cats and touch base. Though I don’t believe in any of this stuff for real, I have sometimes thought that in heaven, perhaps the cats and I would be capable of fully understanding each other, conversing and catching up. My wife and I miss ours dearly.
I’d go look at famous people naked in the shower.
There are several things I’d like to do or see. Way up there is to see former pets again. I’d be pretty happy to play with other people’s former pets as well.
There are old friends and relatives I’d like to see again. There are ancestors I’d like to talk to find out about their lives, what they were like as people, choices they made in life, etc. There are famous people I’d like to get to talk to.
One thing I always wondered about is what happens when you want to see someone but they don’t particularly talk to you. Can they refuse and then you’re bummed? Do they have to talk to you anyway? (Maybe that’s their version of mild Hell?)
But one of the things I especially hope for is a section where you can find out about the things there was no definitive answer to in life. They could be big things (assassinations, conspiracy theories, etc.) or the small things in your life like where missing things went.
I had a cat in my 20’s that liked to wait until I was trying to sleep and would then make odd noises in the kitchen. I could never place what the sound was but when I’d get up to go look, he was always just sitting there. Alone. Nothing near him. No evidence of anything having been played with or messed with. Just him looking at me like “What? Why are you bothering me?”.
One of the little mysteries I’d like to learn is what the hell he was doing during Weird Noises in the Kitchen.
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I assume I get all my pets back, yeah? That’s the deal or blow. So yeah, we’ll go haunt a series of really nice houses by bodies of water–Oregon coast, Belize, mountain lake, Iceland, cenote in the Yucatan–and I’ll spend a couple centuries just catching up on reading and going for walkies and swimming a lot. I’ve had a lot of trauma, I need pet therapy!
Being a celebrity, and especially one for the ages would be a total PITA. How many people want to talk to Ben Franklin or Hitler or Charlemage or Jesus or … ?
Even short-term celebrities like Rudolf Valentino or John Wayne would be overwhelmed. For awhile. Just as you have no real interest in 1850s showbiz folks, e.g. John Wayne’s showbiz interest will asymptotically approach zero over the next 50-75 years as everyone who overlapped with his life and early post-life years ages out themselves. Within the scope of eternity, spending 50 or 100 years dealing with a horde of fans would be tiresome. But it’ll be over soon enough. For Franklin, Queen Elizabeth I, Alexander, Genghis Kahn, not so much.
Of course the flip side is how many people want to talk to you or me? 10, 100? Not a big crowd. You think you’re tired of Uncle Al’s recurring story about his carbuncles he told while he was alive? Just wait until he’s told you that story every day for 10,000 years.
And 100 years from now how many of the “new recruits” there in Ghostsville will seek you out? Damn near zero. That might get to feeling kinda lonely after a few megamillenia.
Related questions though - if they’re all like you (in terms of the OPs standards) how do you find them outside of word of mouth? And if they haven’t learned English (improbable but possible if they’re people watching) you could be out of luck. And can they LIE?
I mean, I could totally see being utterly bored and spending a few decades claiming to be person X Y or Z and BS’ing my way through the decades basking in the adulation of the ‘new guys’ until someone clues them in. Beats being bored.
For example, I could see a number of fellow Jews (predeceased) waiting for Robertson to show up and rubbing in how wrong he was and claiming he got ‘their’ teachings wrong.
I’m going to get myself a front row seat to history. Teleport myself to the south of England, 1066, and watch the Battle of Hastings before my eyes. Then to Ford’s Theater in 1865 (“other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”), then to Tunguska in 1908, etc. etc. etc.
A number of years ago one of my cats slipped out of the house unnoticed one night. She used to go out in the mornings when I went to get the paper, but always came in after a few minutes because she hadn’t been fed yet, so I figured she’d show up the next morning. Nope, she was gone for three months. Then one evening she just showed up in the front yard. She looked healthy and well-fed, so she must have found some sucker to feed her. Of course, I’d asked her where the hell she had been, but she just looked at me like “none of your business” and went over to her food dish and meowed at me until I put food in it.
I think being able watch shit that would totally kill a living human would be the best part. Go visit Hiroshima for a couple days to see the before and after. Surf the Johnstown flood. See how much reality there is to the Noah story.
Krakatoa anyone? I hear it’s nice this time of year (and year).
Darn, I’m screwed: I doubt there are glasses or contact lenses for spirits, and tinnitus for all eternity sucks.
But assuming that can be solved, I’d watch nature. There is enough of it for an eternity: look at all the critters, big and small; dive into every volcano; take a look at the sun from the inside; attend lots of lectures at the most promising universities (no need to turn pages there: the teachers talk); listen to concerts (wonder whether spirits can dance?); watch artists doing art…
Then I would try to influence things in real life, the one I left behind, like a proper ghost should: spook people. There must be a way…
The opportunities for practical jokes on newbies would be plentiful.
“I convinced this one guy that we all wear flowing white robes. He didn’t get out of his pajamas for like 200 years.”
“I have always imagined that heaven will be a kind of library.”
Jorge Luis Borges
Personally, I imagine a sort of library/brothel/dance club.
Hopefully not his Library Of Babel