Fired Coach Contemplates Fun Quotient

My son broke the bad news to me a couple of nights before Hoopfest.

“Dad,” he said, “we don’t want you to coach us this year.”

Fired by a 14-year-old.

When I inquired why my services as a 3-on-3 basketball coach were no longer required, the answer was equally stinging.

“Well, this year we want to just have fun,” my son said.

Oh.

I see.

Coaching from dad doesn’t equate with having fun.

Being out of the coaching ranks gave me time to reflect.

Is it impossible to have somebody help you, guide you, criticize you, and still have fun?

Must fun be, by definition, a free-form, self-directed exercise?

In other words, what makes fun, well, fun?

This may not seem like a particularly heavy or essential topic, but it is.

Fun, or the lack of it, motivates more than Hoopfest teams.

Consider the relationships that crater on the discovery that, “We just don’t have fun together.”

Recall the exit interviews from longtime employees who say, simply, “the job just wasn’t fun like it was.”

Bottling up fun, or otherwise associating your business, product or personality with the notion of fun, continues to be as sure-fire an avenue to success as there is.

You see fun attached to everything from computers to bingo, tissue paper to time management seminars.

Are grape-colored iMacs really any better than computers wrapped in white plastic? No, but it is the fun quotient that bailed out Apple more than anything else.

And think of the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Bingo Casino.

You could stay at home and play bingo. But it’s the idea of going to the reservation and having some fun that makes the drive to Worley worth it. As a result, the tribe has made millions.

Teenagers seem particularly keen on keeping their fun-o-meters pegged to the max.

Fun, between the ages of 13 and sometimes near 30, involves crowds, music and no visible signs of a job, a curfew or hesitation in the face of risk.

The idea of having fun is so powerful among the young that, quite frankly, getting straight A’s doesn’t have a prayer if the alternative is seen as a night out with friends.

Are they wrong?

Or, should fun be something you grab at the moment, because it may not be there tomorrow, or next week, or next year once you have the grades, or finished the job, or taken retirement?

At 50, this question begins to gnaw at you.

The nightmare of all nightmares: Work to 65.

Save your money.

Buy the motor home or lake place.

Have the heart attack before you get to have the fun.

Fun isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, but fun rises high on the list of what most of us think we deserve.

And in some measure, we do.

The fun gene really is tied to the gray matter of our brains.

The idea of fun gives meaning to even the rough spots of work and family.

And, laughter heals.

Smiles make others relax.

Getting away from it all, even for a day, allows us a way to keep plugging along at the rest of what we must do.

From what I can tell, grownups aren’t all that good at fun.

The thought of having fun, making time for it, building it into marriages and raising children too often becomes a chore.

Fun as a chore?

Too often it works out like that.

The easier thing to do is stay another hour at work rather than dig out the dusty old tent or find a spare set of golf clubs for the kid.

The common thing is to offer your kid another stern word of advice about his swing, but that’s it.

And the same goes for your spouse. Fun was just another word for what you used to do.

Once you have forgotten how to have fun, it can be difficult to get back into the groove again.

That’s why I’m not all that upset at being fired as a Hoopfest basketball coach.

More power to the guys who just want to have fun for a day.

That’s a lesson for me.

And here’s a little secret they don’t know.

It will be fun for me just to watch them this year.

Fun to cheer.

Fun to sit on a cooler with some other parents and friends and soak in the day without taking it all so doggone seriously.

Fun to poke fun at them afterward for what they could have done if they hadn’t fired their coach.

Yeah, that will be fun.