Lindy Kato (Writer)

I was seven when I started my list. I didn’t know it was a ‘bucket list’ – I simply started a list of things that I thought I would do. I didn’t have a sense that my ideas might be difficult to achieve. I believed that I would do anything that I put on my list. At the time I had read a book about a girl in an iron lung due to polio, not so common at the time of my list, but common before I was born. This girl would draw things and they happened in real life. Of course it was a story. By the time I was seven I had done with stories, I would get the librarians help me search for climbing and sailing books, saying they were for my Dad so that I could use the adult library. If I had to read another book from the children’s library I would have to kill someone. Climbing Mount Everest and standing on the top of the world could be done – I knew that because it had! At the time there wasn’t any access through either Nepal or Tibet but I wasn’t going to let that put me off.

The second thing on my list was because of a conversation I overheard, if I wasn’t reading, I was ‘earwigging’. Dad was telling Mum about a bloke he worked with who couldn’t earn much money because he was too slow. Dad had said his work mate is slow because he is sick, he has multiple sclerosis. Dad had painted the handles of his tools different colours so that he could find them quickly. At his factory ‘Hubinuts’, he got paid by how many cabinets he made, not by how long he worked. I thought it was hugely funny because he is colour blind. He isn’t allowed to choose paint or clothes but he says it helps keep him fast.
I asked if a Doctor could help the man. Then Dad said something that stayed with me my whole life. He said that his workmate needed a biochemist. I didn’t say anything at the time but as soon as I got to the library I looked in the big dictionary. There wasn’t anything that sounded like it so I had to ask. I like to do everything by myself. I hate help and even worse is asking for help. It is a last resort. The librarian showed me to a section that I had never been to. She said it wasn’t for children it was a reference library and I am not allowed to take the books out and really I shouldn’t be there but they know that I treat the books carefully, I don’t fold down corners or make marks or mess or creases in books. Together we found multiple sclerosis and we found biochemist and although the words were really hard I managed to work out that a biochemist was a new type of scientist, someone who knows about biology and chemistry. My Dad often surprises me but this really surprised me. He can barely read and then he comes up with words like these. I want to help the man so I will become a biochemist and cure him.
Who wouldn’t want to jump out of a plane? In my dreams I can fly and jumping out of a plane is about as close as I can get while awake.