The (Fun) Facts of Life

And some that might not be so fun.

See? She looks like she’s having fun! (Photo via Getty Images)

I recently had the pleasure of attending a weekend festival in gorgeous Harbor Springs. To my surprise, I no longer get very nervous about public speaking, but one part of the experience daunted me much more than it should have: the fun facts. I spoke on three occasions and each of the lovely moderators asked for an unexpected fun fact to share with the audience. I wanted a different fun fact for each event, but could not for the life of me summon anything worth sharing. Much less anything unexpected!

Cue the unnecessary angst, the days of walking around asking my husband the question of middle life: What’s fun about me these days? 

That time I got stuck in a psychic’s kitchen one night while she warned me about the “shadow man” that was following me around? (That scared the piss out of me.) Or maybe the medieval performer named Dante Fettuccine who nearly bullwhipped my hand off while trying to do a trick with a limp banana? Or how I confusedly ended up on top of an elephant in Vietnam after being hustled by a street vendor?

I don’t know what fun means! And in retrospect, these fun facts are actually a little traumatic and unable to be shared without laborious backstory.  

Having had quite a few “first days” as a new hire in professional settings, I’ve been forced to share fun facts more times than I can count, and the pressure is always the same. You want to entertain. To stand out. But also, you don’t want to stand out so much as to make others uncomfortable. You hope to be fun, but not unhinged. (That line is admittedly muddy for me.) There’s something about presenting a memorable, easily distilled factoid that feels so anxiety-inducing. What’s the most sparkling, original thing I can say about myself, in two sentences or less? 

I know: I’m overthinking it. Can’t be helped. But overthinking is distinctly un-fun, right? See what I mean?

In this case, much of my preoccupation was due to the not-so-latent fear that I might not actually be fun anymore. All the facts I could have chosen are from my younger days, when I went out and did things—allowed myself to get into situations that were a little unnerving, just for the sake of experience. With aching bones and a seven-year-old, I now frequently choose safety over spontaneity. Predictability no longer sounds like such a lame word. As a result, my fun facts are pretty tame. What if my fun fact is greeted with blank looks, a tolerant kind of pity that says, Oh, that’s fun to you? I’d guess that this fear is more universal than I imagine. 

And fun can be such a loaded word for some of us introverts. It assumes that there’s a universally agreed-upon definition, usually centered on extroversion or collective experience (nightclubs and Disney and ziplining through canyons with whooping friends). There’s a loudness to the concept—many of us associate it with the things that happen out in the world, rather than what happens internally, in moments of privacy. 

Yet, when I think about what engages my inner mind, I’m fascinated. I’m reading a wonderful book about automatons in 18th-century India. I’m constantly researching art crime, which has led me into troubling (but compelling!) corners. I learned to quilt. I have a new obsession with gas station taquitos. Despite my insecurities about whether any of these things are worthy of sharing with an audience, I’m still interested in myself. And that counts for a lot. 

Fun is a mutable concept. What was once fun to me in my twenties (floating down a river with my scantily clad coworkers and a bottle of bourbon) now sounds like … the opposite of that. And my twenty-year-old self couldn’t have conceived of a Friday night with a sewing machine as a good time. Fun is personal. It’s the moment of bubbling joy that overcomes you, enveloping you completely in the present. It’s not always a shareable fact. Sometimes it’s just an attitude toward life, one of expectant delight. An ongoing sense of peace. And while that’s not my native state of being, it’s one I reach for often enough. 

I’m fun, because I look for fun in the folds of daily routine, in the snags of experience that deserve a second look, the ones that might not always turn into a true memory but leave an impression all the same. I bet you’re fun too!

---

And for those curious, here are the facts I landed on for my events:

• I used to be a book cover designer, which either made me a marketing department’s dream or nightmare when it came to my own book cover. The jury’s still out!

• In my twenties, a streetside fortune teller told me I’d write my first book just before the age of forty. I turned 38 when I published Banyan Moon.

• I have an uncommonly good sense of smell, especially when it comes to truffles. In another life, I would have been one of those ungainly truffle boars sniffing my way through the European forests. 

---

Anyway—to further the fun, here are a few books I’ve read and enjoyed lately:

• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt: This doorstopper about art and grief is well worth the many hours it’ll take you to savor it. As someone else mentioned in an IG comment, the novel is lightly reminiscent of Demon Copperhead with its focus on a young boy’s coming-of-age story. Smart, gorgeously written, and memorable, with all the narrative chutzpah you might expect from Tartt.

• Bunny by Mona Awad: Speaking of unhinged. Samantha, an MFA student who often finds herself on the periphery, gets unexpectedly pulled into a cabal-like group of women who call themselves the Bunnies. Their glossy exterior hides some truly wild secrets that threaten to destroy Samantha’s life. The stakes are enormously high in this dark, ridiculously funny campus novel.

• All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley: A memoir with a big, beating heart. After his brother’s sudden death, Bringley leaves his job at the New Yorker to become a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His meditations on history, community, and identity are so profound and so lovely that I wanted to linger on each page for as long as I could. 

• Miracle Creek by Angie Kim: I’m so excited to read Kim’s latest, Happiness Falls, which has gotten some incredible acclaim, but in the meantime, I read her first page-turning novel about a mysterious explosion in a hyperbaric chamber in a small town. The novel presents different points of views, piecing together a layered story that also incorporates the complexity of a Korean American family’s immigrant experience.

• The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue: I’m so late on this, but it was worth the wait to pick up a copy of this much-lauded debut. Rachel and James are young booksellers who’ve found themselves intertwined in the lives of the Byrnes, an elegant, older couple whose cushy lives and impressive connections draw the friends in. A story about rumors, consequences, and most importantly, friendship, The Rachel Incident was so blisteringly smart and funny that I mourned the last word, finding it hard to let go of each character.

• Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister: I was in the mood for a thriller and this one was perfect for the beginning of fall. Here, a mother witnesses her teenage son murdering a man in the middle of the night. But when she wakes the next morning, she finds that she’s traveled back in time, to the day before the murder. Each time she wakes, she’s further in the past, forced to determine where it all went wrong—and more importantly, whether her actions in the past could prevent a future crime. 

I have more recommendations, but it’s late and I have more fun to seek. Until next time, my friends!

---

Thank you for supporting this newsletter. If you’re interested and able, here’s a link to order my book, the super-fun Banyan Moon: