Things I Don't Understand About Life, Vol. IV: Why Not Funmaxxing?

There are so many things I don’t understand about life this could be a weekly feature, but one of the things I do understand is that would be mad boring, and we all need maximum variety in as many realms as possible these days so as to suppress the urge, however fleeting, to gnaw both our arms off. (Quick, on-topic digression: I was interviewed in 1998 by the Christian Science Monitor for an article about stay-at-home dads, and I told the reporter “I would rather gnaw both my arms off than go back to an office job,” which would have been a pretty good line had it showed up in the paper that way, but instead he heard it as “knock both my arms off” which doesn’t seem at first glance like much of a problem, but if you take it apart like I did you realize that even if you could knock one of your arms off with the other, the task would become wildly challenging once you were down to the one arm you were also supposed to knock off.. And it may not seem like much of a misquote to you, but then it didn’t make you look like a moron in the Christian Science Monitor.).

In Volumes I, II and III of this series, I drew back the curtain on several handfuls of things that plumb evade me, but today I want to concentrate on one because it’s just that important, so buckle up and here goes. I don’t understand people who don’t want to make everything that can be made more fun more fun. Okay I actually kind of do, just as I understand that lots of people wouldn’t offer the central assertion of an essay and then immediately back off, but doing it this way was more fun, and in so doing quickly proves my value proposition, leaving me free to take this almost anywhere I want, assuming you come with me. But first can we all agree putting the big idea in italics made it just a teeny bit more fun?

Most of my friends—and my wife—were raised by social workers, legal aid lawyers, or actual saints, or so their behavior in all things would have you believe. (Fun segue, huh.). They have always seemed to me effortlessly but aggressively ethical and fair-minded, and whether by nature or nurture yoked professionally to the best in mission-driven endeavors. I know in reality it’s the opposite of effortless, but they do make it seem that way, which might be maddening if they weren’t also so much fun.

My professional path was windier, pock-marked with potholes. Most of my work has been for do-gooders, but in hindsight I think my choices were made more to avoid working for bad guys than out of passion for good ones. In a few lean times I made a few questionable but ultimately amusing freelance choices, most notably one I wrote about in Chasing My Tale (4/9/24): “I agreed to write a series of books for kids on the wonders of crude oil for Stratco, one of the world’s largest producers and operators of oil refineries. I basically scribbled a G-rated, crude oil-focused version of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which thankfully never saw a printing press or URL, though I did get paid in full with a bonus: a baseball cap with the Stratco logo and its unforgettable tagline—Crude Oil: The Essence of Almost Everything.”

One of the things of which I am most certain is that members of my nuclear family could fill a bouncy house with stories of my actions making things decidedly less fun, and to it all I would plead guilty and throw myself on their seemingly endless pile of mercy. But I’ve gotten better, and now I funmaxx whenever I think to. It’s a lot like moving your feet in tennis—I forget to a lot, but things always turn out better when I remember. And since I haven’t spent my professional life making the world a better place, I try to take a big tent approach to funmaxxing, as it tends to bring out humanity’s better angels, who leave things better than when they arrived. The obvious but mandatory caveat to all of this is as follows: Funmaxxing is only possible when all the other necessary elements of a safe and full life are satisfied; it’s way easier when concern for loved one’s lives and limbs is low.

As with most everything else, especially at first, it take time, attention, and repetition to build the muscle memory needed for successful funmaxxing. But before you know it you’ll be chucking chunks of fun into everything from taking out the trash to pooping. And because I am nothing if not hit-the-ground-running-practical, I hereby offer these easy-access, user-friendly ways to worm more fun—and, clearly, hyphens—into everyday life.

Get yourself a signature noise. I’m a literal lucky duck in this realm, as I have discovered to my decades-long delight that my duck voice is the Swiss Army knife of noises; I’ve yet to find a situation that does not organically lend itself to some variation of the quack. Personal sound design and production may be new to some of you, but I’d say go weirder than you’re comfortable with at first, as it’s easy to scale things back but if you don’t let loose initially you may never find your best noise. Once you like it, and assuming it’s a happy one, try it out in all sorts of situations to discover the limits of its utility and, as one of my favorite truncated Biblical quotes implores, get out there and “make a joyful noise.”

Give strangers names and back stories. From characters in pharmaceutical commercials to characters in your neighborhood, everything’s more fun when it has a name and prequel. For extra giggles, let go of boring Anglo-Saxon naming conventions and get oddly descriptive, like Suspiciously Happy Woman Walking Dog Wearing Perpetual Cone of Shame; Man Who Seems Unsettled By Any And All Human Contact; and Child Who Always Walks Like A T-Rex.

Goody bags. Or goodie bags. Either way, once in a while when you have people over fill weird little bags with weird little things and give them to people as they leave. It’s fun and gives them something else to talk about on the way home besides whatever stupid thing(s) I might have done or said.

Go discount grocery shopping the day before the weekly sales ad comes out. After six days of sales the shelves at my local Aldi look like they’ve been ransacked by weak but persistent children. It’s also a really fun window into American consumerism. For example, since it’s mid-August the store is all about Halloween, and you can assess from the relative mayhem whether the Pumpkin Novelty Pet Bed or the Orange Squatty Pierced Ceramic Pumpkin with LED light was a hotter item this week.

Spend some time opening doors for people at random public buildings. If you do, there are any number of stupid jokes that are so unexpected they register as funny. “No tips please, I just really love doors,” “Please keep smiling, I’m being graded on this,” and “I’m embarrassed to say how many times I pushed on this sucker before I figured it out, and now I’m just paying it forward,” are just a few of my favorites.

You can go really micro, like rotating slowly three times before sitting down like your cat does. Or if you have or know a baby, try mimicking its every physical action until you collapse from joyous exhaustion. Or, using chopsticks, carefully pick through the pet hair and other detritus from emptying your vacuum as if you were an archaeologist trying to reassemble the shards of a lost civilization. Okay, that last one isn’t for everyone, but funmaxxing is, as it’s the ultimate tool when it comes to turbo-charging life cheeriness. It offers a bottomless well of opportunities for mood elevation and asks nothing in return but your participation whenever, wherever, and however you choose. You know how you never really see all the wires and poles that bring us electricity and other stuff we like until you see one and then that’s all you can see? Funmaxxing is the happy corollary to that, for once you start looking for cheer-up chances you’ll be amazed how many there are. And funmaxxing knows you’re busy, and so will always wait patiently through your shitty work days and major life traumas until you are ready take it up again.

Before I pound the enthusiasm for this concept fully out of you, I leave it to your fertile imagination and personal prism. Go forth and funmaxx, for fun has so much to recommend it beyond its essence, which really should be enough. You can take it almost anywhere, but if you forget and leave it at home there’s likely some where you’re going as long as you know to look for it. And even if there isn’t, you can always make your own.