What is Fun?

I attended the wedding reception of two dear friends his past weekend. They are a young Ghanaian couple who did a distinctive first dance as husband and wife. Afterward we had fun toasting them and dancing to Ghanaian music. The best man, who supplied the music from his ipod play list, kept it playing as we piled into cars to take bridal party photos at various D.C. landmarks. He told me that if we had been in Ghana, the celebration would have gone on until 4 a.m. the next morning. That sounded like—fun.

Fun is not a word you will find in The Rule of St. Benedict. I looked. It’s not there. Life and times in the 6th century were probably too hard for common people to think about what today we call fun. Fun is probably more of a 20th century concept. Actually, according to Oxford Dictionary Online (yes, word nerd that I am, I looked it up), the word is:

late 17th century (denoting a trick or hoax): from obsolete fun 'to cheat or hoax', dialect variant of late Middle English fon 'make a fool of, be a fool', related to fon 'a fool', of unknown origin. http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_us1249505

I remember fun being a watchword among my more bohemian friends in the 70s at my conservative Christian university. Other friends couldn’t understand why everything had to be fun or why fun even needed to be pursued. Still most of us were convinced that the administration did everything in their power to intercept any fun our young minds could devise.

So I was surprised when my spiritual director, an associate of a monastery and a married vowed solitary who had previously been an attorney and most likely had much fun in her day, looked over my emerging Rule of Life, and said, “There’s no fun in it.”

Oh. I had thought cultivating friendships and seeking beauty covered fun. Under that part of my rule I had had lunches with friends, gone to a couple of concerts with my cousin and seen a play with an erstwhile prayer partner. I thought those were fun.

I had been accused of being too serious or taking myself too seriously in the past, but I’ve laughed more—mostly at myself—within that last 10 years than I have my whole life. Ask the community; I’m a veritable crackup during our weekly meetings. Maybe funny doesn’t come under fun. Maybe only you can decide what’s fun.

So I thought about my past experiences of fun: Being swept across campus by my friend, Randy, as we sang the lyrics to the Follow the Yellow Brick Road; trying to learn card tricks from my floor residents; playing hand games with my students from the Caribbean; FYD and I playing a board game on a blanket on the lawn on a lazy summer afternoon when she was six; her sister, Favorite Oldest Daughter (FOD), inviting her whole sophomore class to our apartment for a dance party after vespers (don’t tell their parents, please); the three of us singing along to 70s tunes during road trips. And, of course, playing with my Favorite Only Granddaughter (FOG) has always been fun. (Hmmmm, fun often seemed to involve people younger than I. Without them, apparently very little fun would be had by me.)

I was looking forward to having fun with FOG, for a couple of days this past May, but due to a confluence of circumstances I saw her for only about 45 minutes.

FOG was soaking wet after their long drive from Tennessee. Her mother was hungry, overwhelmed by the heat and disappointed that I wasn’t ready or able to go. FOG’s father was annoyed that he’d had to come into the city and lose their driving momentum. I was angry at myself for miscalculating my readiness for both the move and spending the holiday weekend with them. FYD was nowhere to be found.

My apartment was full of half packed boxes and everything else was everywhere but where it should be. It really wasn’t a safe environment for a toddler. Since we needed to get FOG washed and changed, I carried her through the mess to the bathroom. Meanwhile FYD had arrived to help carry things I was giving (back) to FOD to the car. She was the only person happy about us not spending the weekend with them. She had thought doing so would spoil her weekend fun.

As we walked back through the living room, my granddaughter looked down and spotted, in midst of the chaos, a tiny orange basketball I had unearthed from some box. "Ball," she said (the first word she had spoken since she arrived) reaching for it. So I gave it to her. I marveled at how quickly and easily she had found an object associated with fun among the physical and emotional chaos that threatened to bury the four people who loved her most.

FOG held onto the ball as she was carried to her stroller, as I hugged her good-bye and as she was lifted back into her car seat. Her mother said she played with it until their dog claimed it as his own.

At the car FOG’s mother, father, FYD and I smiled and hugged each other—something we hadn’t done when they first rolled up. (It’s amazing what a little fun will do.)

If fun is the “enjoyment, amusement or lighthearted pleasure” that the Oxford Dictionary defines it as, I know of four adults who, led by a two-year-old, experienced a bit of fun on that last Friday in May.