Fun by Dr. Juan Harrison
My idea of fun these days takes on an entirely new meaning. I’ll pass on the roller coaster and ferris wheel. Yesterday we ate at a country store/café in Saltillo and had BBQ at a friend’s restaurant later, with a trip to a Tom Hanks movie in between. My wife said it was a fun day. Today she’s off to Mineola to have lunch at one of those girly foo-foo places with a little shopping thrown in. Not my idea of fun. Rates up there with a root canal and colonoscopy.
Sometimes it’s simply some uninterrupted time catching up on my reading or the latest news/olds on the TV. Sometimes it’s a few minutes sitting in front of the garage door in the warm sunshine scratching Jessie’s head as she lies curled up at my feet.
Spending time with the grands is like getting a whole new perspective on the world. They ask the simplest/most complicated questions in a genuinely honest way. No, Jack, I don’t know why they call it a thingamabob. Let me Google that. Imagine that. They say “a child shall lead us.” Maybe so. Hanging out with the youngers lets you look at life in a totally new way. As Jack and I are crawling around on the floor after big game to skin and eat, I get to make up for all that waste of perfectly good time when I was a kid getting 2 cents a pound pulling bolls and later loading hay at 2 cents a bale. You can be anything you want with a three year old armed with flashlight and his laser guided plastic rifle.
My eldest son is Gen X Pastor of his church in Colorado Springs, Co and does a fair amount of visiting church members. One boy seems to be a frequent flier or should I say frequent mishap. This time it was a shoulder surgery. My son said the boy is a thrill seeker on the ski slopes and snowboard. Not my idea of fun. As a poor kid at Tech wearing 2 pairs of jeans for ski pants at a Taos, NM ski slope, seeing that little old lady’s eyes bulge out as I almost helped her meet Waterloo coming down the slope toward her, fun can be relative and risky to all involved.
Fun takes on a whole new perspective these days. It’s anticipation of the mailman coming or a visit with the grands. It’s a comfy chair with warm light coming through the window. It’s a freshly mowed lawn clean of leaves. It’s putting up the neighbor’s trash can before they return from the doctor. It’s also a lot of smiles remembering the fun times when we dived into pools and climbed into trees. It’s fun remembering all the dares we accepted and survived. It’s even more fun now to not have to endure the pain of foolish youth. You still get that fun feeling inside without all the external pain. Now we have a whole new round of pains to endure.
By Dr. Juan Harrison
