My Legacy: well-known facts about Saralee’s contributions to all of humanity except Tony

Okay. So I’ve done my will and other documents for when I kick the bucket. What’s left before I meet my maker? My legacy, which is essentially a letter about how I want to be remembered.

Here’s what I came up with:

Dear readers of my column and other family and friends,

If you’re reading this, it means I’ve faked my own death so that I could have the final say to everyone I’ve ever held a grudge against.

I’ve narrowed it down to the millions who had me disqualified from being on the 2024 presidential election ballot. I mean, you’ve got to vote for somebody.

And to Tony, my high school boyfriend who promised me my mother wouldn’t catch us that night.

I want future generations to remember all the staggering differences I’ve made:

1.    If it wasn’t for me, there’d be no internet. I single-handedly invented it. Who else but me could make up a stupid word like Google?

2.    I stopped counting after I won the Miss America title 12 times. My talent? Hypnotizing chickens.

3.    I came up with the idea of the Nobel Prize. I win every year in the category of literature. The esteemed judges have said that my Cape Cod Times columns are “not totally useless drivel.”

4.    I’m the one who told former Dunkin’ Donuts CEO, Robert Rosenberg to make regular donuts into little squished up balls and call them Munchkins.

5.    I told Burger King founder James W. McLamore, “You can’t just have one store in Jacksonville. Make it a chain, for heaven’s sake!”

6.    Ever wonder who invented the peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Well, now you know.

7.    Eighteen seconds before the camera started filming "Barbie," Margot Robbie grabbed me from my director’s chair and begged me to take over her starring role. “Saralee,” she said, “I’m not beautiful enough. You are.” Playing Barbie landed me the seven Oscars that "Oppenheimer" tried to swipe.

8.    I received the Olympic gold medal for winning in the category: Rock, Paper, Scissors.

9.    My charitable calling landed me on the cover of "Time" magazine as Philanthropist of the Year. You see, all I ever did was give, give, give.

“Enough Saralee!” my pleading public would say. “You can’t keep giving everything away. You need to have clothes on your back. You must save a few morsels of bread for yourself.”

“Oh no. I don’t need clothing or food,” I’d proclaim in my quiet, modest way. “I’ve dedicated my life to helping the poor. Why else would I get my real estate license?”

10.  At last week’s annual convention of the prestigious New England Newspaper & Press Association, it was announced during the award banquet that I won First Place Humor Columnist and First Place Serious Columnist (this is actually true).

Now I’d like to acknowledge those who made my life better ― and those who put it in the toilet.

1.    Thank you to Dr. Meredith Grey, who, as a sideline hustle to her job on "Grey’s Anatomy," is the Chief of Endocrinology at Mass General where she discovered that I had Albert Einstein’s genomes before he did, and therefore I should receive all the credit for “his” theory of relativity.

2.    I thank my father for paying my tuition at Syracuse University where I made the most out of his money by majoring in bagpiping.

3. My gratitude goes to the April 8 eclipse fanatics who only have a life for four minutes and 28 seconds of total darkness (yes, I looked it up) every 22 years, and who are only outdone, rather eclipsed (sorry, I had to), by those maniac extremist cicada devotees who crawl out of the dirt (I mean the cicadas – well?) every 17 years.

4.    Thanks to Noman Mailer who’d have me over for cocktails at his Provincetown flat where he’d beg me to finish his books and, “Make the endings really good.”

And finally, for the person who inspired me the most.

To my husband, Bob,

1.    Thank you for your 34 years of vegetable gardening, which gave all the homeless rabbits in Marstons Mills an annual gathering place to decimate (this is true).

2.    You impressed the world by getting all the qualification questions right, and therefore appearing as a contestant on the TV show: "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" when Regis Philbin was the host (this is true).

3.    You set the standard for excellence by winning 24 blue ribbons for your baked goods at the Barnstable County Fair (true).

4.    I’m grateful I knew your mother who smothered everything in ragu. You and I would play a guessing game: Is it chicken or fish (true)? I lovingly recall what she said upon hearing I’m Jewish, “I know one! My dentist! (true)”

5.    I do not thank you for loving our dogs more than you loved me (so true).

6.    Thank you for helping me at Christmas when I got Santa to deliver an 18,000-pound boulder to our backyard (true).

7.    And for kayaking with me along every waterway on the Cape. In winter, we’d wear wetsuits, which made me look like the Michelin Tire Man with breasts (all true).

8.    And Bob? Without your love and support, I’d have never walked again after my spinal cord injury (very true).

And so, my funeral will be held at a BYOB barbecue and giant yard sale in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. Everything must go! Bargains galore!

Forty-five dollar raffle tickets will be sold, but only to poor people, so that one of them can win the Grand Prize ― a gift certificate to the day spa in Hyannis

When Oprah says my eulogy, she’ll say, “Let us remember Saralee whose parting words were, ‘Make sure you bury me with my cell phone ― and a wireless charger.’ Saralee then lovingly yanked me back into her hospital room where she had demanded to be kept alive with machines until, ‘hell freezes over,’ and shouted her final request, ‘I want a Mass Cash ticket for next week’s lottery in my stiff, dead hands.’”

And so, now you know my legacy. Oh, but wait! I saved the best for last. Neil Armstrong can’t get away with his big fat lie. Yours truly was the first to walk on the moon. And I’ll be the first to be buried there.

Award-winning columnist, Saralee Perel, lives in Marstons Mills. She can be reached at: sperel@saraleeperel.com. Her column runs the first Friday of every month. 

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Columnist wants a legacy giving her the last word on a life well-lived