CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Posted on Friday, August 16, 2006

But I don't wanna grow up

By Jackie Burrell
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

THEY PLAY KICKBALL, eat cupcakes and draft annual reports for their Fortune 500 companies on berry-colored computers. They adorn their office cubicles with action figures -- or, like Lander International CEO Richard Tuck, mix pinball and circus management with running a high-powered IT recruitment business.

In short, this isn't Peter Pan. These are uber-responsible thirty-, forty- and fiftysomethings who haven't let adulthood deprive them of a fun-filled life.

"The common misperception is this 40-year-old virgin sad sack in his mom's basement," says Christopher Noxon, who charts the trend in his new book, "Rejuvenile." "But the vast majority have healthy family relationships and high-stress jobs and refuse to give up stuff they loved as kids. One part of your day is doing an annual report, heading down to the bakery for cupcakes, gabbing online about HR Pufnstuf."

Noxon calls that playfulness a safe zone -- "a place where you can play and bring that same spirit back to your responsible life."

Richard Tuck has known that since he was 12.

"I learned a long, long time ago," says the 57-year-old CEO, "that if I focus on goals like adults often do, set myself up for deprivation, that doesn't work for me. In my life, every day has to be fun and once I realized that, everything in the universe made sense."

In addition to his El Sobrante company, Tuck manages Circus Chimera and works on his favorite project, a family fun center that will eventually become Playland-Not-At-The-Beach. Scores of volunteers gather each weekend to build amusement park displays, refurbish toys, and play a little pinball.

"My title is Master of Fun," says Tuck. "With Playland, with Chimera, I am a catalyst to help other people discover the child inside and enjoy every moment."

It was only a few decades ago that any self-respecting grown-up limited his leisure hours to golf and bridge. The more daring might tackle canasta or Yahtzee, but a Twister party? Kickball? Puh-leeze.

Not anymore. Today there are mini-golf tournaments in Myrtle Beach and hopscotch fund-raisers in San Francisco, which boasts about 40 kickball teams with unabashedly playful names like the Baby Bouncies, Los Sexies and Giggidy Giggidy Goo. The latter is a reference not to babytalk, but to Quagmire, the Hefner-wannabe on TV's "Family Guy" -- a TV cartoon resurrected from the depths of cancellation by a legion of rabid adult fans.

That's rejuvenility at work. And it's not just cities. The suburbs have embraced cartoons, kickball and cupcakes, too.

"People always think it's for kids," says Julie Vehorn, manager of Berkeley's Love at First Bite cupcake bakery, "but our biggest clientele is adults."

And the city of Danville is hoping to replicate San Francisco's bouncy success with the East Bay's first adult kickball league this fall, says park and rec sports coordinator Amy Perenon. And the sport has been a hot topic among her counterparts in other East Bay cities.

"We discuss trends," says Perenon. "This is an up-and-coming trend."

It was kickball that brought Noxon and his wife, a television producer, together in the first place. A writer and stay-at-home dad, Noxon was watching cartoons with his kids when he first realized that today's grown-ups had reinvented themselves somewhere along the way.

"I (was) spending big portions of my day watching SpongeBob and eating popsicles and having an incredibly good time," he says. "I realized this is not the kind of parenting my own parents did with me."

In fact, the idea of serious, steadfast adulthood dates to the Victorian era. Etiquette books touted self-control and formality, says Noxon, with rules "about as natural and forgiving as the rib cage-crushing corsets of the era."

An 1883 book, "Manners, Etiquette and Deportment," cautioned that adults should "keep yourself quiet and composed under all circumstances." A family magazine published in 1889 was even blunter: "The only safety for man or woman is to do exactly right. The least deviation from the path of rectitude may lead to the direst disaster."

That path of rectitude echoed down through the decades -- until the baby boomers came of age.

"In the flower children," says Noxon, "there was a lot of romantic innocence and wonder of the child wrapped up in the anti-establishment fighting against this Ozzie and Harriet ideal of what adulthood was."

The Boomers transformed the notion of adulthood, adding first a wistful nostalgia for their childhood selves and then a full-blown embrace of those childhood pursuits. Today, it's all cross-generational. Teens love SpongeBob and Strawberry Shortcake, the treacly cartoon character marketed to the toddler set. And more than a quarter of Disney World's clientele are people in their 50s and 60s -- with no kids.

And the enthusiasm for playful children's pursuits holds true for generations that have come since, says Noxon, even though many members of the X and Y generations didn't have those "wondrous childhood memories to start with. A lot of the Xers I talk with lived through the divorce spike. They were latchkey kids."

Kickball and cupcakes bring levity to a stressed-out exec's day, says Noxon, but it shouldn't be taken as carte blanche for other childlike behaviors, like brattiness or poor impulse control. And, Noxon adds sorrowfully, today's super-charged, ultra competitive environment can taint even the most innocent, goofball pursuits.

Kickball has formal leagues, by-laws and, in the newest development, "kicking strategists" who will teach you how to run up to home plate, pigtails flying, and launch that big red rubber ball on a properly competitive trajectory.

What fun is that?

Reach Jackie Burrell at 925-977-8568 or jburrell@cctimes.com.

GET YOUR BOUNCE ON
Join the East Bay's brand-new adult kickball league. The city of Danville's sports coordinator, Amy Perenon, has one team lined up already, but it takes more than that to have fun. Grab some friends -- it takes eight to form a team -- fill out a roster and turn in your forms by Sept. 1 to play. The co-ed league is open to players 18 and up. Games are Monday and Wednesday evenings, and the cost is $250 per team ($300 for nonresidents). Contact 925-314-3400 or www.ci.danville.ca.us for more information.

If commuting is your thing, you can also join one of San Francisco's four kickball leagues through WAKA, the World Adult Kickball Association, www.kickball.com.

SWEET TREATS
Several Bay Area bakeries cater to the cupcake crowd. That includes Berkeley's Love at First Bite, 1510 Walnut, Suite G, whose strawberry strewn Pretty in Pink cupcakes sell out. You can also find frosting-topped cupcakes at Emeryville's Teacake Bake Shop, 5615 Bay St., at Lafayette's Chow, Ciao! at 965 Mt. View Drive, and other East Bay bakeries.

CREATIVE PLAY
El Sobrante's Playland-Not-At-The-Beach welcomes volunteers who want to help create this family fun center and amusement park museum. Volunteers work on the "phantasmagoria for all ages" on weekends between 9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m., but Master of Fun Richard Tuck asks that people call before they come so he can "pick some projects to tickle their funny bones." Contact 800-548-5318, Ext. 25 or www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org, for more information.