`The Fiction of Happiness'

The elementary schools attended by my younger sons, ages 4 and 7, held Fall Festivals on Saturday. Houston, of course, has no fall in the strict sense, merely less humidity and fewer mosquitoes, though I’ve observed some Houstonians mark the season by stringing their houses with Christmas lights, assuming they took them down last year. Leaves remain green. One maple at the entrance to our subdivision is turning yellow, but from disease. In the afternoon, we found the cast-off skin of a three-foot snake on the side of our house.

The festivals consist largely of games, food, loud children and louder adults. Among the games is a variation on bowling in which the pins are upright gourds and the balls are small pumpkins. Every bowler, regardless of prowess, is rewarded with a plastic trinket manufactured in China, so no tender sensibilities are bruised. My kids enjoyed several variations on Mr. Bouncety Bounce – inflatable plastic cages in which children ready themselves for the mosh pit. Music was provided by a band whose members wore pinstripe suits, and whose playlist was unconventional: “Tiny Bubbles,” “Mustang Sally,” “Poke Salad Annie” and “To Sir, With Love,” among others. The cuisine was narrow: nachos, Tootsie Rolls, sausage-on-a-stick and Sno cones. I had some water.

Most distressing were the crowds in heated pursuit of amusement – weeping children, angry parents. The latter appear to be getting ever younger and wearing more tattoos and less clothing. I’ll give the last word to Dr. Johnson, from Idler #18, published Aug. 12, 1758:

“To every place of entertainment we go with expectation and desire of being pleased; we meet others who are brought by the same motives; no one will be the first to own the disappointment; one face reflects the smile of another, till each believes the rest delighted, and endeavours to catch and transmit the circulating rapture. In time, all are deceived by the cheat to which all contribute. The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue, and confirmed by every look, till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel, consent to yield to the general delusion, and, when the voluntary dream is at an end, lament that bliss is of so short a duration.”