Funmaker

When I was about 8, my brother (10) made up a fantasy game. I can’t remember all the details, but he blindfolded me and my same-aged cousin and led us through a story. It involved walking through an alligator-infested swamp (he snapped at our ankles with kitchen tongs), sailing on a tempestuous sea (he tossed us around in the hammock), and sitting under a magical tree (he climbed up in the branches and rained candy down on us). He did this for absolutely no reason except that, constitutionally, he’s a funmaker. 

One hot day years ago, finding himself without a baby pool, he hauled his canoe out from under the porch and filled it up with the hose so my babies could cool off. On a more recent scorcher, he dragged 40 feet of plastic out of his shed to an incline in his yard, squirted it with Dawn, and set the sprinkler to a narrow parameter. His kids and mine spent an hour slip-n-sliding at Uncle Bruce’s water park. For his kids’ whole lives, our annual trip to New England has involved an elaborate quest involving ciphers, celestial navigation, and treasure–some years it’s literally buried.

He’s a funmaker. 

I, alas, am not. My idea of fun is sitting on my porch talking to grownups. My children, shockingly, do not find my favorite activity fun. And one of them is vocal about how not-fun his life is. 

“What should I doooooooo?” Patrick says, eighty times a day, and then sniffs at my suggestions.

“Go build something with your LEGOs,” I say.

“No. What else?” he says.

“Make a train track.”

“No.”

“OK, if you don’t like your toys, let’s donate them.”

“I like them. I just don’t want to play with them right now.”

During the school year, I can survive the whining by patching together trips to the children’s museum, games of Uno, play dates, and screen time, but after our big trip to Massachusetts in June, I was facing a July of nonstop togetherness. (I recognize the enormous privilege of having a month off with my children… But also <shiver>.)

So I did what parents of my vintage do–I asked my local parent Facebook group for help. Give me ideas, I said. Free or low cost. Little to no prep. 

And they came through! Whole lists of activities, some 5-minute ones, others day-long. At least one person mentioned Pinterest, which I finally joined (what can I say–I’m not an early adopter) and which delivered hundreds of other ideas. The most important comment came from a mom who filled a jar with slips of paper with Things to Do. Most of the Things were fun, but some were chores! A wheel of fortune!

I hoped this was my answer so I scribbled about 100 Things down, a quarter of them chores. I knew, in order to make this work, I had to make the chores tiny, so instead of “clean the bathroom,” I wrote “wipe the bathroom mirror,” “wipe the bathroom sink,” “wipe the toilet,” “scrub the toilet,” and “clean the tub” on separate slips. 

The other stuff ranged from get-your-wiggles-out (“ride your bike to the parking lot and back”) to artistic (“collect leaves and make prints or rubbings”) to sure wins (“30 minutes of extra screen time”).

What an unqualified coup. Here was Day 1:

I figured Patrick would complain about the chores, regardless of how minuscule, but he didn’t! In fact, he said, “Even the chores are fun because I get to pull from the jar.” 

!!!!!!!!!

The next days were a whirl of tiny paper rectangles.

Some items went back in the jar the next day, some the next week, and some were one-time deals.

Arlo got in on many of them, like drawing a Pac-Man board on the driveway:

Any guesses on the slip that prompted this face?:

(It was “go to Pelican’s SnoBalls.”)

So I did it! I made fun! After a couple weeks, the novelty wore off, but Patrick will still pull from the jar every once in a while. And I made it through July without losing my marbles.

Yesterday was the first teacher workday of the new school year. I think one of these years, there will be a shift, but my kids are still little enough that work is a break. During the all-school meeting, the admin team passed around the mic and told us to say one word to describe how we were feeling. I said ‘excited’ because I didn’t want to explain why I was ‘relieved.’