On fun

Whoever invented the Velcro Wall knew exactly what fun is. Fun is wearing a stiff plastic suit with velcro, bouncing on an air mattress, and trying to throw yourself onto a sticky wall. When you latch on, the suit catches but you don't, so you fall into your suit and there is a little jerk as the suit catches you. You recover from the mild shock, peel yourself off the wall and then jump again. Wow. It is that easy. And that is not the only big fun inflatable game you can play. I knew that you can rent inflatable houses for children's parties, but you can apparently do the same for parties meant for older people. I know what I want in my garden when I have a party.

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It's rather true when they say that girls have more fun. At the carnival today, they hung tires from trees and there were mostly girls swinging on them. You see their long hair flying, and notice that there is at least one guy pushing her. Ocassionally, a guy would get on the swing, but it was rare. They also tend to not swing as high, possibly because their girlfriends just can't push them. For guys who want to have fun, it is clear that you need a strong girlfriend to go along with your games.

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Fun is when your college is rich enough to hire a famous live performer, rent inflatable games, put out a picnic, and hire security to hold a carnival. They also close the dining halls to force the students to eat dinner at the carnival, and hopefully engage in some good distraction, like wrestling in sumo foam suits, before heading back to hit the books. The things that I missed out on when I was in college. Where I went to, they made learning fun, so I guess there was no need for giant inflatable boxing rings to amuse the students.

Fun is running on the grass with bare feet, focusing on that very moment on whatever you are doing, ignoring the coldness that is seeping into your toes. It is running from the person on the swing, yet trying to get near enough to give him a push. It is colliding and laughing. It is forgetting.

Someone said that we're the happiest bunch of graduate students she's ever seen. I didn't really know what I was getting into starting out, but I certainly wasn't expecting this -- incrediby smart people trying to bait a bumblebee with sugar in chloroform. Oh life!