Viral video urges millennial adults to bring back summer bucket lists—and we’re here for it

Remember summers when we were young? How full of promise and potential they felt? How they seemed to go on forever—and yet, were also over in the blink of an eye, somehow? And still filled with amazing memories you could look back on for months to come? What happened to those ‘90s summers?

Well, one Instagrammer thinks he knows the answer: We stopped making our summer bucket lists. Yep. Remember those? The giant, multi-column to-do lists we made with every color of gel pen we possessed?

“I genuinely think the reason summer doesn’t hit the same as an adult that it does as a kid is because we stopped making these lists right here,” he says in his hilarious, nostalgia-generating video. “We were setting goals. We were holding ourselves accountable. We were making itemized lists of how exactly we were gonna make the summer pop off. We were setting due dates! Due dates!”

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In the background of the video is one of those summer bucket lists, featuring such items as “Meet a celebrity” (how achievable) and “Take a yoga class” (OK, that one is extremely achievable). 

If you’re hoping to also give yourself (and your kids) a ’90s summer this year, now’s the perfect time to start your list, featuring anything from a low-key rewatch of that eternal classic The Sandlot to going all-out and hosting your own block party.

As a 9-year-old, “we weren’t messing around,” says video creator @pattydelux. “But the problem is, as an adult, we just get complacent. We’re fine to just stay at home. We don’t worry if we don’t learn to do a backflip!”

I would argue that that’s not exactly true—the problem is that if I attempted to do a backflip with my 34-year-old body, I’d need to go to the ER and spend the rest of the summer in physical therapy. But I digress.

“That’s why the summer just passes us by and is mediocre,” he says. “So yeah, yeah, we should make a summer bucket list. I don’t care if you’re 50 years old!”

And maybe there’s something to this. We just need to adjust our lists to be somewhat more age-appropriate. Now that we’re all of a certain age, our grown-up summer bucket lists need to include items like “Go to bed before 9 p.m.” and “Get 28 grams of fiber in a single day.” Now we’re cookin’ with gas, amirite, fellow millennials?