F is For Fun - Also Fatigued Dupe

Origin and Etymology of  the word FUN
English dialect fun to hoax, perhaps alteration of Middle English fonnen, from fonne dupe, First Known Use: 1727

The holidays are over and our family had so much fun I may need a transfusion of sensible rubber garden shoes and straight-laced body shapers. There was fun food, fun games, fun conversations, fun traditions, fun gift giving, fun movie going, fun birthday-candle-blowing, and just for good measure fun wolf howling. 

It was a jolly good time and a ton of fun. Thank God it’s over.

Fun is groovy, but I find it overrated at times. Fun starts out like a turn on that teacup ride at Disney. At first, it’s just a swirly good time, but by the end your neck is snapped back at a weird angle, and you’re praying for death. Swirly fun becomes a sucking whirlpool, dragging everyone down to the River Styx. And I know why.

Fun used to mean, in the old un-fun days, hoax. “Okay, all you silly peasants wrapping a dead tree trunk with maypole ribbons, ain’t we having some fun now?”

Sure, the peasants thought, beats digging through the muck all day. Their masters muttered, under their breath, “Fonne [meaning dupe].” 

And that’s how fun became the heart and soul of our modern world. Must have fun. Work equals muck. Anything muck related equals not fun. Dancing in circles around a dead tree trunk is better than muck lugging. Let’s dance. Or spin in a giant teacup until there’s vomit. 

Note: Fun is often circular in nature.

The flaw in this thinking is that all that muck lugging kept the peasants in gruel and giant turkey legs. We’ve forgotten that. We’ve forgotten that growing gruel and giant turkeys is work, and it’s kind of important work because if there is anything in this world that should be considered without fun, it’s starving.

It’s possible that fun has gotten a bit out of hand in our modern first world. Possible. 

More than peace, more than mercy, more than health, the young people that I know of pray to have fun. “Please [Lord] bless us to have fun.” No matter where they’re going, who they’re helping, or what they’re trying to accomplish. 

I wonder if our prayers aren’t better expressed, “Please, Lord, help us to learn, grow, develop, endure, empathize, understand, or move a lot of muck out of our lives.”

Now don’t get me wrong. The holidays were a ton of fun. And I wouldn’t trade a single minute of fun for anything in the world. But let’s face it; it’s time to get back the muck lugging that keeps us all in giant turkey legs.

Linda (Muck Witch) Zern 

JUST ADD READING - FOR ADAM, WHO ASKED!

In the beginning, I read because I had to figure out what those two crazy kids, Dick and Jane, were up to with their dog named Spot. 

Then I read because the words were everywhere: cereal boxes, road signs, billboards, newspapers, and the instructions on the back of the Jiffy Pop popcorn. The words were every place I looked. And I could READ them. It may have been the magic of ordinary things, but it was magic.

After that, I realized that the Reader’s Digest people had filled our house with edited, condensed volumes of . . . well, everything from Michener to Buck. Those books were condensed—like soup—just add reading, so I did.

For a long time, I read to escape. Enough said.

For an even longer time after that, I kept right on reading because 1) it was one of the things I could do while I breastfed 2) it was cheaper than jet skiing 3) and it kept my mind from atrophying into tapioca.

In the time that followed, reading became a habit that enlarged my soul, filled my mind, dazzled my dreams, and acquainted me with the world as it might be, could be, should be, would never be, but wouldn’t it be cool if it was—in a sparkle unicorn kind of way? I kept right on reading, until I ran out of the kind of books that I thrilled to read.

Now I read to know what to write, always keeping in mind all the lonely little girls out there, in the dark places, who turn to books for comfort and company and who want to figure out what silliness Dick and Jane and their dog named Spot are going to get into next. 

MERRY. HAPPY. JOYOUS.

May your adventures begin with a bang in 2017 and continue with a shower of glitter.

The Adventurers' Club