The Laws of Fun

Last weekend, I attended a marvelous meet-up of folks from Radio Paradise that I have known for the better part of a dozen years.  I've attended a half dozen of these meet-ups over the years and they are always just an enormous amount of fun spent with some of the kindest, most talented people I have ever had the pleasure to know.  It's always an absolute kick when we get together.

However, after a long weekend of shenanigans and a red eye flight home, I ended up with the obligatory cold, no doubt picked up on the airplane either there or back.  A friend commented to me:  "Ah; it's the law of conservation of fun.  You had fun and now you have to pay for it."  I also noted this weekend that my having been gone last weekend meant that it took about three times as long as usual to clean house and weed the garden. 

I had another friend, who attended this year's ComicCon with four teenagers in tow, comment that he highly doubted that he would get to see a single thing on his agenda, as he was busy making sure that the kids got to do everything they wanted to do.  It made me think of many, many (MANY) afternoons spent with the Bug when she was young, going to places that I thought were fun, and spending pretty much all of my time watching HER have fun.  And that I was OK with that.  Which got me thinking about the Laws of Fun and what Fun invariably means to us as adults. 


So presented here for your review, debate and critical analysis are The Laws of Fun

Law 1:  Conservation of Fun:  The total amount of fun in the universe is a constant. Fun may be neither created nor destroyed.

• Corollary of Inverse Rationality:  For each act of fun, an equal and opposite act of unfun is generated somewhere in the universe. 

•  The TANSTTAFL Constant:  The amount of work that accumulates while you are having fun is equal to the the normal amount of accumulated work, times the square of the amount of fun you have while you are away from work.

• Corollary:  Generation of fun with a deliberate target for the unfun can result in later rebounding of unfun upon the original perpetrator.  (“The Karmic Payback Theory”)
•      Susan's Theory of Karmic Balance:  Just because it isn't nice, doesn't mean it isn't funny

Law 2:  Funtropy:  As the scope and scale of fun increases, the potential for degradation into unfun also increases

• Corollary:  The more structured the fun, the more unstructured the unfun (the “National Championship Effect”)

• Corollary:  The rate of degradation into unfun is inversely proportional to the cost of the alcohol being consumed (the “Bud Light Constant”)

Law 3:  The Parental Observer Effect:  Watching your kids have fun is, in fact, fun.

• Disney's Corollary:  The likelihood your child will melt down and/or puke is a function of the product of the amount and duration of fun the child has.