RIVER CITY JOURNAL: WHEN IT'S ALL SAID AND DONE, LIFE ITSELF IS FUN

Asked to outline what I do for fun as the world spins its orbit, I have arrived at a suitable answer: Don't ask.

While guests were arriving for what we all knew would be a lovely dinner at the home of friends here in Cape Girardeau, a nice woman I had just met asked: "What do you do for fun?"

I've been asked about my hobbies before, and I've been asked what I do when I'm not working. But I can't ever remember being asked what I do for fun.

It was a coincidence, I'm sure, that in the same week I saw a new doctor for the first time. I've found over the years that most physicians aren't very chatty. Time is a precious commodity for them -- and their patients. I don't like waiting for a doctor, and I sure as heck don't want to be the reason another patient waits.

But the new doc casually asked, while poking and making doctor faces, "What do you do just for fun?"

I could see this was a question that needed to be answered. If everyone is going to ask about the fun in your life, you need to be ready with an answer. Better still, you ought to have a fun answer, possibly outright funny.

So I started to think about all the fun in my life.

(Insert long, studious pause here.)

To be frank, thinking about what I do for fun didn't produce any quick answers.

First, let's talk about the definition of fun. For some people, fun is anything you choose to do as opposed to doing things other people -- bosses, spouses, children, neighbors -- want you to do.

But I enjoy working with bosses. I like completing a task my wife asks me to do. My children were smart enough never to ask me to do anything really difficult. Neighbors learn your limits right away, and aside from the time the seat of a neighbor's riding lawnmower caught fire -- while she was mowing her lawn -- I have I never been pushed on neighborly good deeds.

In the strictest sense, I could say I have fun doing all those things. But the inquiring woman at the dinner party and the questioning doctor wanted to know -- at least I think they did -- the things I enjoy doing that they might find a bit surprising or offbeat or unusual.

I remember something fun my wife and I did shortly after we were married. She was teaching high school English, and I was a reporter for a metropolitan newspaper. Our best friends also were newly married. She taught at the same high school with my wife, and he was a young manager for an oil pipeline company.

One Thursday evening after dinner at our friends' apartment, we were playing canasta (does anyone play canasta anymore?), and we started talking about playing hooky -- all of us -- from our respective jobs. The next hour or so was devoted to concocting believable excuses for missing work. I remember my wife's excuse was she cracked a tooth eating a candied apple (come on, that took some creativity and originality), and our teacher friend's excuse was pink eye. I can't remember what Bob and I dreamed up or even if we thought we needed an alibi.

Then we got up from the canasta table, walked out into the apartment building's parking lot, crammed into our Volkswagen bug and headed for the highway. At this point you should know we had no destination in mind. We simply headed down the highway. Soon we realized we were headed in the general direction of the Lake of the Ozarks. So, in the dark of a spring night, we started looking for a place to stay at the lake. Thanks to a helpful customer at a pool hall along the roadside, we were led to acceptable accommodations.

The next morning we had to think of things to do. We wound up going to a nearby town and buying a badminton set. We set up the net near the shore of the lake (it was still too cool for swimming) and played badminton all day. That evening, we had dinner, spent another night in our lakeside cabins and headed home the next morning.

In our younger days, THAT was fun.

Some 30 years later, I can't for the life of me recall why.

Nowadays -- and please remember we're age-advantaged, but we're not tottering -- we don't do anything on the spur of the moment. We plan vacations months in advance. We live on tight schedules dictated by overflowing calendars and incessant alarm clocks. We certainly would never go a full day without brushing our teeth, much less three whole days. We make hotel reservations and insist on confirmation numbers. I can't remember the last time we simply decided to go look for a place to stay.

Well, actually, that last part is a bit of a sore subject. It was only a few years ago that my wife, younger son and I set off for a few summer days in Colorado with no itinerary or reservations. What a colossal mistake, unless you consider driving more than 300 mountainous miles at sunset looking for a place to sleep to be fun. Honest to goodness, one lodging establishment offered us the only available bed -- in a tepee alongside a roaring creek. We kept driving.

So, to answer the question, I can tell all inquirers what I no longer do for fun. I haven't played hooky in a long, long time. Before moving to Cape Girardeau, I worked for the same newspaper company for 22 years. In that all that time I took one and a half sick days because of cracked ribs after slipping on the ice while taking the blind piano tuner home. I think I've already told that story.

For the most part, fun is a curious thing. I think I lived a fun-filled life. I enjoy work, I enjoy home, I enjoy my family, I enjoy our friends, I enjoy all sorts of things. I enjoy listening to the Saint-Saens "Organ Symphony" while reading an Ian Buruma novel about a legendary cricketer in India.

What isn't fun is trying to categorize the fun in my life. So don't ask any more. It just isn't fun.

SPARROW WATCH: With regret, I must give you two pieces of information:

First, the sparrow that built a nest in the wreath on our front door isn't a sparrow. It is, according to bird-egg expert Ken Bryan (a colleague at our commercial printing operation up the street), a house finch.

Second, this particular house finch decided, after laying five eggs and attempting to hatch them, that this isn't a very good neighborhood after all, particularly if your closest neighbors constantly open and close the very door where you have made your home.

We are sorry to see the finches leave. Our hope, of course, is that they found more suitable quarters in the holly tree across the street or the cypress tree on the courthouse lawn.

A finch in a cypress tree.

Has a nice sound, doesn't it?

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.