At this age, having fun means work

I’m counting down to my 62nd birthday, which, if all goes well, takes place Feb. 17 … four days behind this year’s Mardi Gras.

It’s not particularly a “milestone” birthday per se; the really good senior discounts begin at 65. But, hey, it’s the birthday at which one can begin to collect Social Security benefits!

As I approach this birthday, I think about a joke my former coworker, Susan Pierce, shared years ago. You know you’re getting older when, she said, “you have to plan to drink.”

Oh, Susan. With youth this far behind me, I feel compelled to expand that joke. You know you’re advanced in age when you have to plan spontaneity. “Periodt” (as they spell it on social media).

It seemed so easy during those young-adult years. Decide one minute to go dancing, get up and do so the next. Decide one minute to meet friends (or Romans, or countrymen) for dinner, Happy Hour or an afternoon by the lake, get up and do so the next. Decide one minute to hit the water park, take a road trip, get married … you get the drift.

Nowadays, doing such things involves careful planning. Folk my age don’t just “hop up” and go to the grocery store, let alone go on any road trip.

(The former involves making out a list; making sure the inflated prices don’t render you bankrupt; self-medicating to keep your stress level down; doing calisthenics and stretches to make sure you have enough stamina to maneuver through gauntlets of scowly fellow shoppers or workers restocking shelves, wait in line and navigate a mercurial self-checkout machine; and trying to remember to take your wheeled, foldable, too-small grocery-bag carrier. The latter involves making sure you packed your meds, glasses/contact lenses, slippers, adequate amount of undies and sea of toiletries; plotting your course on Google Maps; worrying in advance that there won’t be enough convenience stores or rest stops along the route and praying your way through traffic.)

If you still even have friends who are willing to hang out with you, it may take days just to find available free time, at the same time, on your schedules. Then, right before you get together, one of you is subject to throw your back out or discover you’ve double-booked: Your grandchild’s first birthday/dance recital/graduation/wedding is that day and time.

And let’s not forget that you definitely have to plan for being out after 10 p.m. … that is, on the off-chance that there’s something you’ll consider to be worth staying

out past 10 for.

The other week, a plannedfor event turned spontaneous for the Williamses. Dre and I attended a party at which we’d figured to stay a respectable amount of time, enjoy the refreshments, mingle appropriately and be home in time to watch the 10 o’clock news or at least the Jimmy Fallon rerun afterward. Didn’t work out that way. The hosts had hired a she-DJ who seemed to know all the right songs to take us back to our younger years mentally, and cause us to dance like we were physically back in them. Among the last few guests to depart, we got home later than we’d arrived home from anything in a long time.

One of the co-hosts, who’d joined Dre in some “dropping it like it’s hot” moves, texted the next day to make sure Dre was OK and to recommend ibuprofen as a remedy for spontaneous acts performed by anyone over the age of consent. Dre, who’s still blessed with some bodily flexibility, wasn’t sore. But he languished in bed until well after the crack of 2 p.m. I, who work out and try various remedies for come-and-go aches and pains, was OK save for some stiffness and a sciatic-y left leg that tried to exact its revenge.

Fun times. But — note to self — we need to plan any repeats at least six months in advance. Maybe even a year.

But maybe the struggle for spontaneous fun isn’t just just an old-folks thing. A recent Washington Post story brings back the memory of a favorite saying of my last pastor’s: “Fun” is the first three letters in the word “funeral.”

“Fun is dead,” Karen Heller’s Dec. 3 piece is headlined. “It’s become emphatic, exhausting, scheduled, hyped, forced and performative.”

Heller begins by informing readers that “sometime in recent history, possibly around 2004, Americans forgot to have fun, true fun, as though they’d misplaced it like a sock. Instead, fun evolved into work, sometimes more than true work, which is where we find ourselves now.

“Fun is often emphatic, exhausting, scheduled, pigeonholed, hyped, forced and performative. Adults assiduously record themselves appearing to have something masquerading as ‘fun,’ a fusillade of Coachellic micro social aggressions unleashed on multiple social media platforms. ‘Look at me having so much fun!’” (As a writer, banging this column out the day after that aforementioned party, getting excited about the linguistic beauty of the last half of that last sentence is the only thing I can muster up the strength to do spontaneously.)

Heller is right: From holidays and weddings to baby-having celebrations, retirement celebrations and vacations, having fun is more work than reward. The work comes in the planning; the fancier the desired event, the more work involved. And let’s not even mention parking. Bottom line: Even the act of planning to drink can be a pain, whether or not the planner was born before Nixon was president.

Best to obey that adage to just stop (the planning) and smell the roses. Oh wait. No roses blooming outside right now. Gotta decide what kind and color of rose, order the desired roses from the florist, figure out the best time to go pick them up, preferably when there’s enough of a lull in traffic …