Where's the fun? Not England.
Where's the fun? Not England.
Two days ago, it was my birthday, and I turned 44. While celebrating this meh milestone, a good friend gave me a friendly elbow and said, “Enjoy this year cause next year it all goes downhill.” I took a giant swallow of my cocktail and said, ‘Wow, Jeff, do say more about that because it’s lifting my spirits so.” We laughed like uppity people in a Noel Coward play, throwing back our heads and clinking glasses, with a, “Touché, my dear!” tossed about. Then, Jeff’s smile fell and he explained that a study of adults in England had just been released that revealed 45 is “the least fun age”.
I’ll save you some time in case you’re pressed to enjoy your last year of fun. Here are the article’s main points:
45 year-olds have no fun whatsoever
45 year-olds can’t even think of what would be fun to do and they’re definitely not going to find and do that thing on a weekday
The best you can hope for in your insipid adult life is a crispy biscuit and new trainers on Boxing Day (I made #3 up based entirely on stereotypes)
So now, like an English anthropologist, I’m thinking about fun. F-U-N. Like the kind of fun my husband has at street hockey. Or the fun my kids have at their activities. Where is my fun? What is my fun? There are things I do on a regular basis for which I don’t get paid. But are they fun? Is it possible I am one of those soggy, boring English adults soldiering along without any life of her own?
I like to attack existential problems like this with lists. So here goes:
Things I do that aren’t paid work:
Cooking (not that fun, more like I’m determined my family won’t starve)
Watching Jane the Virgin reruns (At this point, I’m mostly fast-forwarding to the Justin Baldoni scenes)
Playing board games with my kids (but not Monopoly. NEVER EVER Monopoly)
Doing a puzzle
Running (merely to stave off obesity, not fun)
Yoga (also not fun)
Cleaning (VERY not fun)
Mowing the lawn (not fun)
Going to plays (very fun, unless it’s a bad play or it’s so good a play that it makes me feel bad for not having written it. It’s a delicate situation.)
Reading
Going to the grocery store (Soul crushing)
Things I do that are enjoyable and could be considered fun:
Getting in bed early with home decor magazines (it sounds so sad when written out)
Going out for lunch with a friend
Saturday afternoon movie matinees (like the kind you used to do every weekend before you had kids. I’ve done this once in 11 years.)
Have dinner parties (bonus points if it’s a theme party)
Get up early on Sunday, make a pot of coffee and read the entire Washington Post Sunday Edition (aka just the Style and Travel sections and the magazine. And really, just DateLab in the magazine).
Take my son to the dog park and play with other people’s dogs (seems creepy now)
Things I want to do. Or think I want to do.
Requires Secret Service advance team-level planning
Take a tap dance class
Cook things from my trove of cookbooks again
Go dance at some live music thing
Sew vintage inspired dresses for myself so I can be the edgy Jackie O I dream of being
Find an Italian language conversation group and speak Italian again
Go on weekend hiking day-trips
Ride a bike (need someone to get our bikes up to a passable safety standard)
Get a dog
Things that could be monumentally fun:
?
?
?
Well, call me Margaret and serve me dry scones because apparently I am an English dullard! How could I have let myself go like this? Not only did I used to actually have fun, but I also used to actively conceive of what would be fun even if I couldn’t do it. I used to imagine myself in French baking classes and Potomac River kayaking outings. In fact, I assumed that when we moved from Brooklyn to the DC suburbs that we would be the kind of people who always had a kayak strapped to their car roof. I imagined I would be the kind of mom who made stained glass creations with her kids and had an elaborate craft room where late at night my husband and I would throw clay on the wheel and reenact that scene from Ghost (except he’d be alive). I thought we’d have a treehouse (that we built ourselves) and an outdoor adult playground, of sorts, with a fire pit, a hammock village and a beach volleyball court (even though I really hate volleyball. I never hit the ball on the right part of my hand and end up with bruises. And it’s not a sport you want to brag about having an injury from).
It turns out we bought a house with a robust set of HOA rules, all of which preclude my backyard funscape. And, my husband reminds me that we have only kayaked once together, in another country, which would neither necessitate us buying a kayak, nor strapping it to our car roof.
Where is the fun? What is the fun? Have I been so focused on getting my kids to find their fun and try new things that I forgot to do it myself? And, who is going to do all the research and planning it would take to get me into that proverbial (or actual) tap class? What it would require is an assistant who would plan it all out for me, get me the requisite tap shoes, decide on an appropriate outfit (all I can see is Liza Minelli in tights and a way-too-short sweater dress), and arrange child care so all I have to do is show up and Gregory Hines my way across the room. Clearly, I think tap is going to be the one dance style I’ll excel at.
How do you have fun? Maybe you can give me some ideas. Just please don’t say scrapbooking*. And please don’t tell me to go to Costa Rica**. Also nothing involving falling from great heights*** or going at really fast speeds**** or cosplay*****. But other than that, whatcha got?
*No offense if scrapbooking is fun for you. Hats off!
**I’m sure Costa Rica is loads of fun. Just, I can’t go there everyday. I need something to do on a weekday and still be in bed by 10:30.
***The era of imagining myself skydiving has ended
****I’m a nice, Jewish girl, afterall.
***** I don’t know how to pronounce that word and that in itself makes me uncomfortable.