The Definition of Fun

When I was a kid I always thought I’d get to a certain place where I didn’t have to do things that I didn’t want to anymore. Yet the older I get the more I realize that adulthood basically consists of vacuuming, sniffing leftovers to see if they’re still good so you don’t have to make dinner, and wondering when that last credit card bill became so violently overdue.  

I find it common too that I get guilted into supporting someone’s cause, say running for a rare cancer or degenerative spine disease. And because it’s insensitive to say, “Well, I didn’t give you the cancer in the first place,” I end up signing up.

In the lulls between final notices this past summer I ended up signing up for Mud Hero with a friend. Though, I ended up running/treading slowly through bog water trying to hang onto my shoes with a bunch of people who were strangers at the beginning and dear friends by days’ end—mostly because I’d thought it smart to wear shorts and had to scoop the mud out at odd intervals after going down the mud slides (why they couldn’t remove the tree roots from said slides I’ll never know).

By the end of it, when we were going through the car wash-like showers that had been set up outdoors, one of the other runners in our group was showing off her recently reconstructed breast. It struck me that this togetherness might be why people so enjoy being part of sports teams. I also knew that if I wasn’t careful all the comradery I was feeling might be enough to push me over the edge and sign up the next year.

The thing is I can’t decide if I even know what fun is anymore. Being late on my taxes is kind of thrilling at this point and book club is a pretty big highlight of the month. I enjoy things that I never thought I would: basketball, NPR, and concerts with musicians so old that the lead singer might not make it to the end of the night. I didn’t expect to spend my Saturdays picking mud from behind the hollows of my ankles, but I’ve got to say, maybe it’s not really that bad. 

Bratislava, Slovakia 2015 Petrzalka neighbourhood