A Spoonie's Guide to Summer Fun

It’s summer (still), Spoonie Friends! What better way to celebrate than to explore these sun-filled favorites?

Remember: You’re just as entitled to have fun as everyone else.

Hitting the Beach

1. Melt into a Useless Puddle
   Is there anything more iconic than lounging on the sand, your lifeforce slowly draining into a towel? Somehow, it manages to combine your favorite activity (that would be “doing nothing”) and more sweating than the average 40-something produces while running on a treadmill. What’s not to love?

2. Serve as a Seatholder
   Even if you aren’t much of a beach person (you’d rather avoid the outdoors entirely, if you were given the option), you can still pretend to be one. Offering to hold down the beach chairs in case of a freak beach tornado, you can get into the sun without the pesky need to experience any fun.

3. Critique Sandcastle Building
   Who knows better than you what a crumbling infrastructure looks like? If you’re already going to insist on subjecting your body to intolerable heat, you might as well derive some fun from the process. Let those kiddos know exactly how unstable and prone to collapse their strictly-for-fun creations are.

4. Scare Your Friends
   The average beach resort comes equipped with rocky outcrops that serve as fun little tidepools when the ocean creeps away. There is nothing you can enjoy more than toddling out onto these slippery, fragile, prone-to-breaking promontories while your friends watch you slip and stumble (from a safe distance). Falling in the water a time or two merely amps up the terror.

Visiting a Theme Park

1. Challenge Your Vagus Nerve
   What does a person with wonky blood pressure, an unpredictable arrhythmia, and questionable stomach stability need more in their life? Why, a thrilling ride on the world’s oldest functioning roller coaster! Wake up your vagus nerve and see if it’s willing to function again!

2. Catch Some Much-Needed Rest
   Also known as “entertainment,” theme park shows are the chance to sit down (preferably in air conditioning guaranteed to freeze your joints) and doze off in the ensuing darkness. With performers on stage, no one will pay attention to your contorted body in that theatre seat. (Just remember not to snore)

3. Surprise Your GI Tract
   On a theme park outing, there is an unwritten rule to sample the local fare in favor of packing your own lunch of trusted foods. Nothing says “I love my stomach” quite like shoveling down fried grease topped with sprinkles and a pickle.

4. Test the Bounds of Your Sensory Issues
   What are theme parks famous for? (No, not exorbitant pricing and actors dressed in frightening animal-esque costumes) Crowds! Nowhere else on Earth will you find a larger clustering of humanity, complete with screeching children, cursing adults, and the near-constant blaring of earworm music from every angle. Not to mention a veritable horde willing to violate your personal space and even dare to touch you in flagrant disregard for your bubble.

Hosting a Cookout

1. Enjoy a Trip to the ER
   The perfect way to experience the complete cookout is to engage in the various (physical) games presented by your gracious host. Throw all caution to the wind and give your frangible limbs free rein. Hurl yourself at the various tasks presented despite all reasonable protest from your water-logged paper muscles.

2. Engage With a Stranger
   Cookouts attract the most random assortment of characters searching for free food. With a little luck, you can find yourself trapped in a heated argument with a person you have never met before and (Universe willing) will never see again on a topic no one else has even the remotest interest in.

3. Violate Social Norms
   No one throws a cookout without assuming that their guests will desire a break from the heat and camaraderie in favor of scoping out any unlocked rooms within the house. If they felt differently, they would provide more shade options in the corner, away from the heated discussion of how to grill dead cows.

4. Turn People’s Stomachs
   Explore the bounds of decent conversation by trotting out your most gruesome and detailed stories of past injuries, illnesses, and unresolved complaints for the entertainment of a brand new audience. Be sure to include the full explanation a doctor once provided of what your endometriosis looked like, wound within the coils of your intestines.

Hanging Out in the Pool

1. Meet Someone New
   Everyone (almost everyone) dreams of rescue by an attractive lifeguard—the ultimate “meet-cute.” Only you stand true chances of the fantasy turning to reality. After all, no one else is as unstable on your feet as you, prone to tumbling over at the most random times. (With luck, you’ll hit the water first)

2. Practice Your Acting
   Are you having a drowning episode in public, in full view of your friends, family, and neighbors? Or are you merely attempting to swim as your sinus passages fill with snot, courtesy of the heavy scent of coconuts, bananas, and chlorine choking the air?

3. Aspire to Greatness
   Nothing demonstrates your status as the Ruler of Summer quite like the ability to take over the sun-warmed waters of the children’s splash pool. If you extend your limbs to their fullest, you can soak up the heat into your abused muscles without a single other person present.

4. Learn a New Stretch
   Why not dislocate your useless shoulder joints in a casual attempt to remove a slightly damp bathing suit from your equally moist skin? Amaze your friends with your jaw-dropping hidden talent as you become trapped within a simple strap for hours!

Don’t forget: You’re not limited to this list! You can find other ways to soak up the killer sun and sweat to death with every step you take outside!