by Dave Barry
You know who’s not out of practice? Lucy. She’s an old lady; she sleeps more than she used to, and she moves a little slower. But she is still always up for fun. If she sees another dog, she wants to play with that dog, once they have completed the formality of inhaling each other’s butt fumes. If there’s no other dog available, she wants to play with us humans.
She especially likes to play a game I call “ball,” where the ball is any one of the many dog toys Lucy has acquired over the years. Some of these are actual balls, but they’re also a wide range of other prized Lucy possessions—a rubber shoe that squeaks; mysterious sketchy-looking organic chew things that we buy at the pet store that for all we know could be human ligaments; a large, blue, bone-shaped stuffed toy she got for Chanukah9 that says KOSHER; and a wide array of other stuffed chew toys, including dolls representing John McCain and Hillary Clinton. I was given these dolls as press freebies while writing columns about the 2008 presidential campaign; they were manufactured by a chew-toy company under the assumption that either McCain or Clinton would be the next president. (That’s right: when it comes to predicting the outcomes of presidential elections, chew-toy companies are as incompetent as professional journalists.)
Lucy plays ball to celebrate all major household events. Let’s say I open the drawer where we keep Lucy’s leash. This is huge, because it means we’re going outside, where we will have a chance to explore and savor the endlessly fascinating tapestry of weewee aromas. But we cannot go outside immediately, even though I am standing by the front door holding the leash, ready to go. First we must celebrate this exciting and exceedingly rare occasion that only happens three or four times per day by playing a game of . . . ball!
To initiate the game, Lucy sprints to the family room and roots urgently through her bucket of possessions—there are dozens in there—until she finds the one she’s looking for. Say it’s her John McCain doll. She grabs it in her teeth and races back to the front door. She skids to a stop a few feet from me and shakes her head violently, flaunting the doll, daring me to try to take it from her. My role in the game is to pretend that I find it highly desirable, even though if I am being perfectly honest it is, after years of use, a hideous drool-soaked wad of filth.
“Give me that!” I say, lunging at it. “GIVE ME JOHN MCCAIN RIGHT NOW!!”
But Lucy does not give it to me. I have not earned it. She prances backward, brandishing John McCain in a taunting manner. At this point I am supposed to chase her. I don’t want to chase her; I want her to let me put her leash on and take her outside to do her business so I can get back to my important adult human business of not having fun. I have tried training Lucy to drop the ball on command and come to me, but she is not big on commands. So I have no choice but to play ball. I lumber after her, shouting, “GIVE ME JOHN MCCAIN!” as she prances gaily from room to room.
This can go on for several minutes. Eventually Lucy decides that she has won, thus extending her undefeated streak to 6,748 consecutive games of ball. She drops John McCain and permits me to put on her leash, and we go outside, where she has even more fun.
Going outside is not the only occasion for a game of ball. Lucy plays it whenever anything exciting happens. By “anything exciting,” I mean “anything.” Sunrise, for example. Or somebody entering the house, even if that person left the house fifteen seconds earlier. Or she happens to wander into a room and discovers John McCain lying on the floor from a previous game of ball. So what with one thing and another, Lucy—like Dylan—is always finding opportunities to have fun. This is yet another area in which Lucy is happier than I am.
So our second Lesson from Lucy is:
Don’t Stop Having Fun.
(And If You Have Stopped, Start Having Fun Again.)
As was the case with the previous Lucy lesson—about making friends—I have not done particularly well in this area. You’d think I’d be having a lot of fun, seeing as how my job consists of being funny, or at least trying to be funny. But the truth is that being funny, when it’s your job, is work. Ask any stand-up comedian.
I’m not saying professional humor is grueling work, like mining coal or cleaning toilets or being a personal assistant to a Kardashian. But generating humor for a living—although it can be interesting and challenging—isn’t fun. You never, after working on a joke for forty-five minutes, find yourself thinking, Ha ha! I am cracking my own self up with this humor! Your thinking is more along the lines of: Is it too late to apply to law school?
Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been very lucky in life, and I’m definitely content. But being content is not the same thing as having fun. I think contentment is what we older people too often settle for in place of fun. Note how older-person “fun” is depicted in the seventeen trillion TV commercials and magazine advertisements intended to sell drugs, denture adhesives, incontinence paraphernalia, mobility scooters, reverse mortgages, gold coins, disaster food, prepaid funerals and all the other products that older people can be scared into buying.
The seniors in these ads, having purchased these amazing products, are now free of care and worry. They can have fun! And almost always, the way they demonstrate how much fun they are having in their suddenly carefree lives is by . . . grinning. That’s pretty much it. Sometimes they’re grinning on a golf course, sometimes on a beach. Sometimes they’re a grinning couple; sometimes there are seven or eight of them, all grinning like maniacs. It’s never clear why they’re grinning: nothing amusing appears to be happening. In fact, nothing of any kind is happening, other than a bunch of old people standing around grinning. They’re having senior fun!
But it doesn’t look like real fun, at least not to my eyes. I believe real fun needs to have an element of the unexpected, of adventure, maybe some weirdness, maybe some risk, possibly an arrest. I’d like to see a senior-citizen-product TV commercial in which the seniors, having just discovered, let’s say, an amazing breakthrough laxative, are celebrating their emancipation from constipation by—I’m just spitballing here—blowing up a toilet with military-grade explosives. Maybe in the background there’s a bong. THAT would look like fun.
So how can older people like me keep having fun? In an effort to answer that question, I decided to take an inventory of the truly fun experiences I’ve had in the past couple of decades. Most of them, I concluded, involved traveling, especially with my family. I know not everyone is physically or financially capable of traveling. But if you are, I highly recommend it: travel forces you out of your routine and opens up opportunities to have adventures.
Not all travel adventures are fun, of course. Commercial air travel is often an adventure, but it’s usually not the “Wow, this is amazing!” kind of adventure. It’s more the “Wow, we missed our connecting flight so we’ll be spending the night on hard airport chairs under TV monitors blaring CNN!” kind of adventure.10 But if you somehow manage, despite the efforts of the airline industry, to actually reach your destination, travel adventures tend to be the good kind of fun.11
The most fun adventure my family ever had was a few years ago, when we traveled to a wildlife preserve called Londolozi in South Africa. We flew there from Johannesburg in an alarmingly funky old prop plane, which had to circle the dirt airstrip while the staff chased away some animals so we could land. From there we were transported via an open Land Rover to the compound. It was surrounded by a high fence, with an opening for vehicles that had an electrified grate on the ground to keep animals out.
We were dropped off in front of the lodge, and as we stood there with our luggage, a large elephant suddenly appeared in the fence opening, maybe twenty yards from us. The elephant kept stepping on the electrified grate, backing off, then stepping on it again; he was clearly trying to get into where we were. There was nobody else around; basically it was just us and an elephant, which—this bears repeating—was quite large. Michelle expressed concern about this situation; I, assuming the traditional role of Man in Charge, assured her we had nothing to worry about, based o
n my extensive experience of never having been anywhere near Africa.
At that moment a lodge staff member came trotting up. I assumed he was going to confirm that we had nothing to worry about. Instead he said, “We need to get out of here right now,” as he continued trotting past.
“What about our luggage?” asked Michelle.
“He doesn’t want your luggage,” said the staff person over his shoulder.
So we trotted hastily after him into the lodge. Seconds later, the elephant got through the gate. The staff told us that they called him Night Shift, because every night he tried to get into the compound. I asked if he was dangerous. The staff did not really answer, but their expressions said: “It’s a wild animal the size of a bus. What do YOU think?”
That was definitely the most exciting check-in of my life.
At dinner we were given a safety briefing, the main point of which was that we were not, for any reason, EVER, to go outside at night unaccompanied. A staff member escorted us from the dining area back to our bungalow. He carried a large, powerful flashlight; he kept sweeping the beam around, peering into the darkness. He told us that we had to stay close together, and that if we encountered an animal, under no circumstances—he stressed this repeatedly—were we to run.
We asked what would happen if we ran.
He said: “If you run, we are all dead.”
He did not appear to be joking.
We didn’t see any animals on the way back to the bungalow, but Night Shift spent the night in our vicinity. We knew this because in the morning, when we went outside, we found a mound of poop the size of a Fiat on our doorstep. It was sort of like when you’re staying in a hotel, and they give you a complimentary USA Today. Welcome to Africa!
Breakfast was also an adventure. We ate in an open-air dining area surrounded by trees that were occupied by a gang of monkeys with low ethical standards and a highly sophisticated understanding of geometry. They observed the diners closely, figuring the angles and the distances, and if you got an inch too far from your plate, BAM, a monkey would leap from a tree, dart across the table in a blur of fur, snatch a piece of your fruit and leap back into the tree, setting off an explosion of screeching commentary from the other monkeys (“Bob got an apple!” “Well done, Bob!”).
Some of the dining-area staff carried slingshots and tried to keep the monkeys at bay by shooting pebbles at them. They almost always missed. In what was clearly an ongoing battle, the monkeys were winning.
After breakfast the real adventure began, as we rode around the savanna in an open Land Rover with two supremely skilled and knowledgeable guides, Alfred Mathebula and Bennet Mathose. Those guys could track a mosquito through a thunderstorm blindfolded. They showed us giraffes, elephants, rhinos, buffalo, warthogs, wildebeests, hyenas and many nervous deerlike critters that belong to various species but all fall into the zoological category of “lunch.” We followed a leopard named Camp Pan as he patiently stalked an impala, which managed to get away, and thank God it did, because it looked like Bambi, only cuter. If Camp Pan had caught it, my daughter would still be sobbing. We saw a pair of naked hippopotamuses doing it, and let me just say that if you ever get a chance to witness this amazing natural event, you will feel (1) profound respect for female hippos as a gender, and (2) a powerful urge to poke out your own eyeballs.
Our Land Rover got incredibly close—I’m talking a few feet—to some lions, who during the day mainly lounge around looking badass. They didn’t appear to be at all concerned about our presence, which makes sense. Their attitude was: “We’re lions, and you are puny hairless sacks of meat.”
Lying among the larger lions were some young ones, which looked very cute, almost cuddly.
“I want to hug one!” exclaimed my daughter-in-law, Laura, from the back seat.
Bennet, without turning around, said: “We will come back in the morning and fetch your shoes.”
He also did not appear to be joking.
We went on a nighttime ride, during which Alfred and Bennet stopped out on the savanna and, after checking around for lions, let us get out of the Land Rover. We then had cocktails under a billion trillion stars, which is the best way to have cocktails. While we were standing there, a group of hyenas—which is technically known as a “cackle”12—came trotting directly toward us. This alarmed me. Hyenas look menacing enough in daylight, and downright scary when they’re coming your way at night. I asked Bennet if we should maybe get back into the Land Rover. He shook his head.
“It is not always about us,” he said.
And it wasn’t about us. The hyenas trotted right past, ignoring us, except for one, who went directly to Bennet, stopped, sniffed him, then went trotting off after the cackle.
“He knows me,” said Bennet.
That’s another great thing about travel: It often serves to remind you that the world is full of things that are not about you. Unless of course you’re traveling via cruise ship, in which case everything is about you—feeding you, entertaining you, selling things to you, taking you on guided tours—which is why cruises, although they can be pleasant, are not, to my mind, nearly as much fun as the kind of traveling where you don’t always know what will happen next.
So what I’m saying to you, especially if you’re getting up in years, is: Don’t settle for contentment. Don’t just stand around grinning. Get out there. It’s a wonderful world.
One of these organizations is the Lawn Rangers—or, as they are referred to in their press releases and basically nowhere else, the World Famous Lawn Rangers. This is a marching unit that performs precision lawn mower–and–broom routines in parades. (I am using “precision” in the sense of “not even remotely precise.”) The Rangers are based out of the small Illinois town of Arcola, which bills itself as the Broom Corn Capital of the World, because at one time it produced corn used to make broom bristles. Arcola celebrates this proud heritage every year by holding the Broom Corn Festival, which features many exciting elements, including:
Even if you can’t travel, you can still find ways to have genuine fun. The key, I think, is to stretch your boundaries, to escape the numbing routine that old age so easily decays into, to take a chance, get out of your comfort zone, maybe risk making a fool of yourself. When I inventoried my life, I concluded that, aside from traveling, most of the truly fun moments I’ve had in the past couple of decades have resulted from my involvement in two organizations—I use this term loosely—that are fundamentally ridiculous.
• A sweeping contest, in which contestants must use a broom to maneuver several pounds of corn seed around some barriers and into a hole. As you can imagine, it gets pretty intense.
• Food, including pork chop on a stick.
• A beer tent.
• The largest gathering of porta-potties13 in Central Illinois.
But the highlight of the Broom Corn Festival is the parade, and the highlight of the parade is the appearance of the World Famous Lawn Rangers. I joined this crack unit back in 1992, at the invitation of one of its founders, Pat Monahan. I traveled to Arcola—located in Douglas County, the flattest county in Illinois—where I attended the Lawn Rangers’ business meeting, at which the Rangers prepared for the parade via a strict regimen that included:
• Drinking beer.
• Listening to the team doctor’s report, given by a Ranger who was not technically a doctor—technically, he worked at a hardware store—but did have a doctor-style bag containing an array of truly alarming sexual implements, which he displayed one by one, often introducing a new implement by saying, “I don’t know if I should show you this one . . .”
• Drinking more beer.
• Watching talent demonstrations from various Rangers, including the legendary Doug Reeder, whose specialty is presenting original works of performance art involving the word “moon.” At my first business meeting, he climbed a ladder and removed, one by one, approximately ten pairs of boxer shorts en route to a climactic finale that involved shoo
ting a bottle rocket out of his butt. It was one of the most impressive things I have ever seen a human do, and I have seen childbirth at close range. I missed an even more amazing finale, in which Ranger Reeder revealed that he had a potato gun between his thighs, from which he fired off a blast of chili. (At least everybody hoped it was chili.)
• Drinking some more beer.
• And maybe having a few more beers.
Another highlight of the business meeting is rookie orientation, during which veteran Rangers—wielding toilet plungers to denote their rank—train first-time Rangers to execute the precision maneuvers that will be used in the parade.
Each Ranger marches holding a broom in one hand and pushing a lawn mower with the other. Some of the lawn mowers are “show mowers,” which have been customized by the addition of some decorative object such as a stuffed animal, easy chair, plastic snowman, commode, etc. Rangers wear cowboy hats, and sometimes black masks to protect our secret identities; we also wear aprons with pockets containing candies that we toss to the crowd, or, if we get hungry, eat.
At various points along the parade route, the leaders will hoist their plungers and give the “Brooms up!” command—signaling the Rangers to raise their brooms—followed by a command to execute one of the two precision maneuvers:
1. “Walk the Dog,” in which the Rangers run around in small circles, turning their mowers 360 degrees, then resume marching in approximately the original direction.
2. “Cross and Toss,” in which the Rangers—who march in two columns—switch places with the Rangers across from them, and then toss their brooms to each other, and then sometimes pick the brooms up off the ground because they failed to catch them. (This is a result of the beer part of the business meeting.)
