My daughter's bucket list is color-coded, immaculately written and AWESOME

Sometimes she needs me to check items off. Sometimes she needs my money. Sometimes she needs both.

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This is the latest in a series on chasing big goals, crossing items off your bucket list, and doing things you thought you’d never do. This story originally appeared in Missouri Life Magazine.

My daughter’s bucket list is color-coded, immaculately written and AWESOME

My 15-year-old daughter makes endless lists. Packing lists, homework lists, Halloween candy received lists, lists of her lists, etc. Last summer she made an all-timer: A Bucket List.

It’s color-coded with immaculate handwriting and boxes for her to check off as she completes them. Every single item will result in joy for her, joy for her friends, joy even for me and my wife and our other daughter—Cardinals games, hikes, road trips, sleepovers, double sleepovers, trampoline sleepovers, go tubing, watch fireworks, make s’mores, etc.

For some of them she needs me, for some of them she needs my money, and for some of them she just needs her friends. For one of them, she needed all three: ride a big roller coaster.

That one’s a doozy, by far the most ambitious item on her list and the one I wondered when or even if she would check it off. Her previous “attempts” to ride big roller coasters were not really attempts at all. She flatly refused to even consider it. Yet as the summer progressed, her goal became even bigger: She didn’t want to ride just any big roller coaster, she wanted to conquer Batman at Six Flags, a beast of a ride that rates among the fastest, gnarliest and scariest in the state.

To get to Six Flags, she needed me to drive her and buy her ticket. To find the courage for the ride, she needed the support and encouragement of her friends—and not just any friends, but a very specific group of them—Ella, Lily and Heidi.

All of them are members of our big “framily” group. We call ourselves the Blocrossdetters, a smushing together of our last names (Blough, Crossman, Devorss and Ritter). There are eight parents and 13 kids, seven of whom are teen-age girls (moment of silence for the parents’ collective blood pressure). Together we do holidays, camping trips, backyard cookouts, and as of one glorious Sunday in September, trips to Six Flags.

We arrived at the park and hustled straight to a roller coaster called American Thunder, where my daughter saved me a seat next to her. I climbed in and asked how she was feeling. She said fine, and she looked fine … but then a dead giveaway: She pulled the seatbelt—OUCH!! TOO TIGHT!!—and pain seared across my waist.

The ride started, she grabbed my arm and squeezed it. And just as quickly, she let go … of me and her fears. We hadn’t been inside the park 20 minutes and already she had completed the tallest (80 feet high) and fastest ride (50 miles per hour) of her life. That would have counted as a Bucket List item if she hadn’t talked so much about Batman.

We ran off American Thunder to the concourse, where her smile formed a circle around her whole head. She proclaimed herself proud that she did not swear as she screamed on that ride.

Good job, darl—Wait, what?

She artfully changed the subject and vowed she was ready for something scarier. Hoping to seize the momentum even if this was happening way faster than I anticipated, I blurted out: “Let’s do Batman then.”

Could she be ready for that already? I thought it would take all day for her to screw up the courage for Batman. She is usually an inside-her-own-head overthinker (Should I? Should I? Should I? Ad infinitum.) Not today, apparently, and maybe never again.

As we speed-walked to Batman, I wondered where my timid little girl went and who this thrill-seeking young woman was. The presence of the Blocrossdetter girls helped—Ella, Lily and Heidi are her best friends in the whole wide world, and they are all fearless roller-coaster riders. But my daughter was not just swept along by peer pressure. She was leading as we arrived at Batman, and she didn’t miss a beat as she walked through the entrance.

She wanted to ride with her friends—Batman sits four per car—and I pretended like I didn’t care and jumped in the row behind her. We crawled to the top of the first big hill, cut a nasty right turn and suddenly that Bucket List was going to get a great big check mark at its most crucial item.

Batman threw us 50 miles an hour over the 1:40 ride covering 2,693 feet. We flipped upside down five times and pulled four Gs and I yelled so loud for so long that I couldn’t hear whatever bad words came out of her mouth.

Yes, I was sad she was up there with her friends and didn’t need me, but sitting behind her worked out because I saw an important detail I otherwise would have missed: her feet kicking in delight as the ride ended.