I want to stay put, cosy on my upper east side sofa, cosy in my upper east side life, binging on the latest mind escape. White Lotus got me through December. What’s going to get me through January? But being the amazing wife that I am, I put on my coat, hat and gloves and follow Stretch to what I’m sure will be an outing we’ll regret.

How late does this thing go? I ask Stretch in the Uber downtown?

4am

Jesus Christ.

Don’t worry we can leave after an hour. It’s good for us, take advantage of this city.

The Uber pulls up to some nondescript street full of small shops. I don’t really want to get out. Old fears sometimes stick. But there goes Stretch heading to the back of a line of people so I follow.

Did you bring any ID? They’re checking people’s ID, Stretch says.

I quickly scramble scanning my phone for some ID. When we get to the bouncer, he looks at us and our tickets and waves us in. No ID needed. We’re clearly not minors. Fine, I’m old I know it. Then we go inside, and I see a big room filled with people, all in their 20’s and 30’s.

What are we doing here? I wonder. We so don’t belong. My next thought- No way I won’t get Covid. Then we go to check our coats. It’s the honesty system. Ohh Jeez. Goodbye coat, I think. Why did I wear my favorite snuggly coat, plus saffron-coloured cute hat and brown leather gloves? They’ll all be gone by the end of the night.

We go to the dance floor- it’s very intimate- crowded but people make way for us oldsters. Stretch beams at me and immediately starts swinging his hips, getting into the groove and calling me Baby.

Who is this man? We are too old for this. My name is Elena, not Baby.

But he’s not deterred. He won’t comply. He keeps dancing, smiling, kisses my neck. PDA, no, no, no. Not at 60! I turn and face the stage and pretend I don’t know him.

Doesn’t he realise we look ridiculous? We are the oldest people in the room by at least twenty years. I scan the crowd looking for anyone, please someone older than us. Spotted! There’s a woman, full head of grey hair, jacket still on, wearing a mask. And I feel better. The lead singer is a man named Brian Jackson. He talks to the audience in between each song. I’ve never heard of Brian, but the crowd seems to know him. There’s a lot of clapping and whooping when he talks.

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One song, Brian says, he wrote in 1973. I was 11 in 1973. Brian couldn’t have written this song when he was 11. Brian is older than us. And he’s good. Before another song he tells us that the media is full of violence and war right now, but we need to remember tonight-

We’re a cool, calm fun community, he tells the attentive crowd.  My band, our mascot is the gorilla. The gorilla is a super peaceful animal.

I look around the room. Everyone is having a good time, dancing and chatting, meeting up with friends. We’re all just peace-loving gorillas. No one is interested in stealing my stuff. Everyone here just came out for some fun  and good music on a Saturday night.  I might not even get Covid.

When did I become so negative? So cautious? So uptight? Age is about an attitude, and I didn’t like mine.

Then Brian talks about it being ok to disagree with your neighbor- and if you want change, you need to change yourself first. I like this guy. I realise as I scan the room that I used to be like these people. Carefree, somewhat adventurous (I’m only a few miles from my cosy apartment after all), relaxed and willing to give it a go. But as I got older I put up walls, got more afraid, resistant to winging it and seeing how an unconventional evening might go. By the end of the set, I am dancing with abandon as is that other older women with the grey hair and the mask.

I realise that it’s easy to come here in your 20’s and 30’s but what’s important is to come here in your 60’s, to be reminded of who you once were. I’m not quite ready for Burning Man. For me, this was adventure enough. I saw glimpses of myself thirty years ago and don’t want to say goodbye to that person.  And my coat and favourite hat and gloves, they were right where I left them.

Postscript- when we got home I googled Brian Jackson and here’s what came up:

Brian Jackson earned mythic status among music fans thanks to his pioneering work with Gil Scott-Heron in the 70’s, where his flute and electric piano performances on ‘Pieces of a Man’ and ‘Winter In America’ virtually defined the sound of an era. From the 80s onwards he went on to record with Kool & The Gang, Will Downing (whose debut album he produced), Roy Ayers and Gwen Guthrie among many others, and while many veteran musicians tend to stick with the sounds they know best at some point in their careers, Jackson remains an unusually adventurous, vital and broad-minded artist to this day.

January, 2023

The post Stretch Takes Me Out of My Comfort Zone, and That’s a Good Thing appeared first on Elena Bowes.

Amongst other acquisitions, my father and Uncle John bought WHAM-O back in 1982. Wham-O sold things like the Frisbee, Hula Hoop, the Super Ball, of which the Super Bowl was named after, and many other toys that were inexpensive, easy to learn and fun. Ever try twirling a Hula Hoop around your hips and not smiling?

Or throw a Frisbee across a field and, even if you’re like me and the Frisbee goes nowhere near its intended destination, it’s still entertaining.

More than the products they sold, my father and Uncle John loved hanging out together. In one article entitled “Childhood Pals Strike It Rich” journalist Linda Bucklin quotes my father as saying,

We’re having fun.

And Uncle John replied:

I’ve probably never told you this, Bowes, one of the things I like best around here is to hear people laughing – in the halls, everywhere.”

The two men always shared an office. Later in the article my father says,

When we moved to the new offices here, I said ‘Rose, you talk louder than I do, we’ve got to get a little more distance between our desks,’ so we moved them an additional foot and a half apart.”

So, you’d think having fun would be second nature to  my father’s daughter, aka me. If only.

Elena, I don’t get the sense that you have a lot of play-time,” noted my astute psychic Deirdre on Face-time last month.

What time?”

Play.”

Oh.”

You are very focused and serious. You got to inject some fun. You got to laugh again.  I want you to put play on your to do list. Break down the word recreation, Elena, it’s re-create. Play enhances your creativity. So go and have some fun!”

Turns out my psychic is on to something- (I guess that’s her job) According to author Catherine Price in her new book, The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again

Having fun is important for your resilience, happiness and mental and physical health. It’s not frivolous. It’s essential.”

By fun, Price does not mean scrolling through my various feeds or binge-watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. While those might seem fun at the time, they are more mood depleters than enhancers. Price describes true fun as “the confluence of three psychological states: playfulness, connection and flow.” It’s when you’re completely unself conscious, free from anxiety and self-criticism. Bellyache laughter is a good example.

Dancing and singing to a great song is another…

In an article in Thrive Global titled The Importance of Fun- Without it you get sick, psychotherapist William Anderson echoes Price;

Sometimes, as we grow up, life becomes hard and we stop having fun. We may even begin to think that having fun is not OK.”

Anderson believes that if we stop flooding our brains and bodies with those feel-good chemicals on a regular basis, we stop the natural medicine that keeps us well, body, mind and spirit. We get sick. We need to keep doing those things that trigger the flow of the good chemicals.

With Delta, Omicron, and the next weirdly named variant sure to appear soon, not only does having fun seem that much harder, it also seems that much more vital.

With no time to waste, I rewatched the 1986 hit comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for inspiration.

Actor Mathew Broderick plays Ferris, a high school senior who plays hookey with his girlfriend and his best friend in suburban Chicago. They go to a baseball game, an art museum and a fancy meal wearing sneakers- using the best friend’s father’s prized red convertible Ferrari as their mode of transport. In this scene, they’re at a parade:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOMO_eSGcU4

Ferris regularly breaks the fourth wall and offers pearls of wisdom to the audience, including this pearl at the end:

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Indeed, you could.

So, my New Year’s Resolution is not to go to the gym or become a vegan or a nun, but to sing, laugh and make merry at some point every day.

In these turbulent times where it seems the only news is bad news, where fear and scaremongering are everywhere, where adhering to rules are all we know, it’s fun, if not vital, to take a few calculated risks. While I am not recommending going maskless to a crowded concert, I am suggesting mixing it up.

Go sledding, play games, go skinny dipping, play karaoke, bake an upside down cake, dance to a whole album, learn to play the guitar, hula hoop until you laugh so hard you can’t hula hoop anymore.

Happy New Year!

January, 2022

The post My Quest for Fun appeared first on Elena Bowes.