Fun for All and All for Fun! The campaign starts here!

Less than 30 minutes ago, my good friend Rodney Frost and I had a phone conversation about how there are people who, for some reason, want you to be working at something.

RODNEY: "Of course Brother Ed is right.

All. 

The. 

Time.  

For those folks—and they know who they are—writing at a computer or reading a book just because you wanna is never quite activity enough.

Very often, dads and moms fall into this category, and they ask questions like, "you just gonna sit there and watch TV all day?"

That kind of thing.

Me: “Interesting you should bring this up.  I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the subject, as recently as this very morning.  I’ve decided that after 60 years on the planet, I’m giving in to Ed.”

Rodney: “What do you mean?”

ME AND BROTHER ED: On left

Me: "My brother Eddie’s been right all along.”

Him: “Of course Brother Ed is right. But what’s he right about this time?” (Rodney constantly refers to Eddie as “Brother Ed”. Makes him sound like Brother Andre. Or  St. Francis of Assisi or, my personal favourite, Ethelred the Unready, who was a real guy by the way.)

Me: “I was just reading a story about Justin Trudeau meeting with the president of the American Chamber of Commerce and they were talking about how many thousands of jobs they’re going to create. Why do they want to put everybody to work? What’s so great about working all the time?’

Him: “Yeah. I know. You’ve got these people who want to take a nice 30-acre piece of farmland on the edge of town and build a factory so other people can go in there and slave away on an assembly line manufacturing some useless little items that end up on a dollar-store shelf.”

Me again: “Yeah, or else they’re like, “Hey! I’m going to dig a hole so you can crawl down into it and work in my mine!’”

Him: “Instead of jobs, why can’t politicians offer happiness? Or, perhaps, fun?”

Me or Him I forget which: “Exactly. Rather than people shouting ‘Jobs, jobs, jobs!’ they should be yelling 'Leisure, leisure, leisure!'”

The Other Guy: “Indeed. Why can’t they tell us they’ll try to make everybody comfortable so we can  do whatever we want to instead of working all the time?”

Brother Ed: (who’s probably in bed at his place at the moment) to my kids, frequently: “Your only job is to have fun.”

Me: “See what I mean about Eddie being right?”

Rodney: “Know what else is really funny?"

Me: "No."

 Him: "I was just talking to Lenore, and she said, ‘it's been a long time since Peter phoned looking for a story idea."” 

Me: “Goodbye.”