The fall festival season blew in on this latest cool snap, and brought with it many fine memories, mainly of my Uncle Mose (short for Mozart).
He claimed there was something in the crisp air and chaotic scramble of activity at a fall festival that inspired some folks to become “sillymorphs,” and he was all for that, inasmuch as he was one of that ilk.
He believed evolving into a “sillymorph” - the word is from the Latin silliomorphus , “to undergo a change from the overly-serious nincompoop you usually are to the lighthearted, child-like, fun-loving nincompoop you should aspire to be” - greatly increases the chances that you will laugh more, love more, and live a more interesting, if not happier or longer, life.
Here are what Uncle Mose felt were the signs that you may be on the cusp of such a change:
• You act before you think. You find yourself pulled toward following your impulse to attend a festival, any festival, before you think about all the things others feel you should be doing instead.
• You choose instant gratification and rationalizations. You make up reasons why this particular festival is a must-go-to event. Keep in mind, your reasons may not be convincing or make sense to anyone but you. Then, you go.
• You enlist a co-conspirator. Not everyone can enjoy a festival with the unselfconscious abandon of a sillymorph, so you don’t bother asking those who are above such nonsense. Uncle Mose loved bringing children between six and 12 years of age (as a favorite nephew I was often asked to go) and those adults who felt as he did.
• You keep rules to a minimum, choosing just two. Safety. That’s the first and most important rule. No other rules appeal to you except this: smile at everyone as if you know them well and are really glad to see them.
• You make plenty of funny faces. You avoid under-reacting. When the kids get excited about something at the festival, your face tells all, and is uninhibited in its expression of allegiance with them.
• You eat something known to kill lab mice. You realize that festivals are no place to pretend you’re on a diet, so you eat with gusto.
• You eat a lab mouse. The ultimate in culinary delicacies, if properly prepared (just ask Chef Pat Mould, who's eaten a few).
• You make up songs and sing them with gusto. The sillier the better (even better if they relate to your time spent at the festival). And just who is this guy "Gusto" we keep planning to eat and drink and sing with, I once inquired of my Uncle Mose? He sounded like a fun guy. Mose just grinned.
• You try to win a stuffed animal for a child or your co-conspirator. Yeah yeah, the games at festivals are over-priced and rigged against you, so it's hard to win, but try anyway.
• You go on one of your companion's favorite amusement rides just because. Casting off fear or impending nausea, you give in when a child or companion implores you to go with them on a ride you would usually avoid.
• You throw up on them. There are consequences of being with a sillymorph, and your co-conspirators must accept them with gusto (that guy again).
• You buy a balloon and let it go, watching it as long as you can. If conditions allow, you might even give chase. I once caught up with such a balloon, miles away, after chasing it in a car and then on foot through a field. The resident bull did not appreciate this, but I retrieved that balloon.
• You do silly walks. Long before Monty Python had a Minister of Silly Walks, we had Uncle Mose urging us to do even the simplest things in a different way. Just for fun.
• At the end of your day at the festival, you find a deserving child (one being silly) and give her or him the rest of your unused tickets to rides.
Uncle Mose always talked about his favorite part of the festival on the way home and asked about ours. This was a wonderful way to fix the memories in our heads, having both lived through them and talked about them.
To those of you who are not and never will be on the verge of such silliness, take heart: we need you desperately to keep the lives of the sillymorphs in your family on track. They simply cannot manage on their own.
As for the sillymorphs themselves: yours is not to take heart, but rather give it. We all benefit from your generous spirit and example. ###
p.s. Enjoy this article as well. And here's a great website about FUN.
