Play Date

TASK #24: PLAY DATE

“Never, ever underestimate the importance of having fun.” Randy Pausch

I want to tell you how sad I am–actually, how sad my life has become. I found a journal that I had written in my twenties, which was roughly twenty or so years ago. At that time–the late 90s, and I was a grown man, and working, and I decided one day when I went into a bookstore (truth be told, because it was raining, not because it was something that I normally did), but I spotted a jounal on a “marked down 20%” table, and I bought it. I payed $7.99 for it, which was roughly what I paid for two Bud lites at the time, so it was a good bargain.

I want to tell you how sad I am–actually, how sad my life has become.

I brought it home, and for the next few months, which happened to be a spring and summer, I wrote in it every day–until I didn’t, which was around late August, when I tossed it into a drawer and forgot about it.

Well, it resurfaced last week during a “let’s pile up some of this junk and go to Goodwill” moment, which soon passed, and I took the journal out to the garage, popped a Bud Lite (some things never change) and read it.

It wasn’t a great read. But it was educational. Why? Because that summer I was on a men’s slow pitch softball team. We called ourselves “Ten Years After”, and besides playing softball we got drunk a lot. I went to movies. I saw “Something About Mary” and fell in love with Cameron Diaz. I went to the lake and swam and drank beer. I went to Cleveland to see an Indian’s game. I went to a casino outside of Detroit. I went to a class reunion. I Had sex with two women–one of whom I would marry. I played horseshoes. I played boccie. I hid in the trunk of my buddy’s car and snuck into a drive-in motion picture and saw “Saving Private Ryan”. We left the theatre that night, went to my buddies house, got high, and played war with his b-b guns.

Highlight of the summer? One of my friends, Steve, worked at the “Swedish Smorgasbord”, a cafeteria. On his last night (he was quitting to go work for Amtrak), he was supposed to close up. Well, he closed up all right–after he let us in the back door and we drank and ate for several hours. I had a half of a roast beef, about a pound of mashed potatoes, some ham, fried chicken and corn on the cob. One guy took a whole lemon meringue pie–his plan was to bring it to our softball game the next day. Only as he was leaving the restaurant he tripped and landed flat on the pie. That pissed him off. His shirt and jeans were a mess so he threw them in a dumpster and walked home in his underwear.

In short–I did shit. And I had fun doing it!

Nowadays I don’t do anything! I come home from work, take some sass from my kids, get bitched at by my wife, watch something on tv that I don’t want to watch–like that miserable “Bachelor” show, then go to bed. If someone says, “let’s go to an Indian’s game”, I say no. If someone says “let’s go to a movie”, I say are you kidding me?

But then I read the journal. And my 17 year old son walked into the garage and said, “let’s go play catch”. Now, I haven’t played catch in years. And I was tired. And I had some chores to do…but I got up and said, “ok.” He dug up the gloves
and a ball and we went to the park and threw the ball around.

And damn it, it was fun. I laughed. Now, I’ve stopped laughing because my shoulder is on fire and the palm of my left hand feels like someone took a hammer to it, but hell, it was worth it.

So I think I’m going to get buy me another journal.