4/25/04

The Summer of the Bored

There are some good things about summer, there really are. Relief is a big one. Relief that homework is a word we can suspend nightly usage of for three months. The structure that runs our lives all school year, with four kids in four schools, loosens its belt just a bit. We might get to leave our pajamas on for longer than 19 seconds after the alarm goes off some mornings. There’s also the sound of my children running through the sprinklers at about 4:30 pm some July day, while I’m slicing cantaloupe. I can hear them squealing in joy and pain, as a tender foot finds the sand shovel blending into the lawn. Another one of my favorite summer past-times is sitting on my cold cement porch at dusk, watching my girls do cartwheels in the lumpy front yard, with fireflies just starting to put on a show.

There are also some bad things about summer. A few years ago I would have said what I feel when I think about the approaching summer with my four children out of school is…anxiety. Anxiety that churns my lunch. A watered-down dread from the pressure of becoming some kind of t.v. commercial mother who offers kool-aid to the masses, not minding the way they all ask too many times for a refill. There is an impossibility to summers, because children, face it, are impossible to please.

My daughter can come home from a combination birthday/sleepover party to go directly to a swim meet with ample concession stand funds provided by myself, home to a phone call inviting them over to a friend’s house, home to an hour of family games, then a trip to the ice cream stand, what do you hear 90 seconds into your return home? “I’m bored.”

My husband and I drive 900 miles(each way) for a week long vacation with three other families, chosen particularly because my kids find their kids fun to be around. We spend hundreds on dolphin cruises, beachwear, and delicious food. As we are unloading the suitcases at home, one splitting open on the driveway, I hear, “What are we doing tomorrow?”

Perhaps the unthinkable happens, and I allow my younger daughter to actually have a sleep over at our house, including movie rentals, several name-brand bags of candy and chips, sole use of the family room, and two best friends. I might buy some nail polish and paint their toes three colors. Just as I’m patting myself on the back for providing my idea of the perfect summer evening I hear my daughter say, “My stomache hurts and Shauna doesn’t like that movie, Mom.” They both look at me with bored eyes, waiting for me to fix it all.

The thing is, I don’t like being the boredom-buster at my house. I think washing their odiferous socks, remembering to buy juice in blue only, finding their backpack under the clean laundry in the basket is enough. Not to mention feeding, clothing and giving birth (not in that order) to them. I don’t want to be in charge of keeping them un-bored. So I came up with a plan a couple years ago.

“Oh sweetie, I’m so glad you used that word, bored. Now can you please go empty all the garbage cans in the house?” This or a similar chore will be offered to them in a Pat Sajak voice. There is no backing down. They don’t get to say “I didn’t mean to say bored, no no no no….” No I just smile, give them a shoulder hug, and point the way. “Oops, it is the B word rearing its ugly head. Right over here you’ll find the sock bin, waiting for you to sort it.”

Yes, I’m a boredom Nazi. If anyone uses the word, in the summer months, then they get a chore. They can either learn to amuse themselves or they can do some work for me. Those are the choices.

If I try to think back to those fuzzy years of my own primary school summers, and sum it up in one word it would be ‘bored’. It doesn’t matter that we built forts out of blankets, had our own music school, roller-skated and bicycled and hop-scotched through our days. Afternoons of playing dress-up, intricate plays we put on, bat-ball games were rounded out by evenings of Popsicles in our post-bath pajamas, coloring contests, ‘Truth or Consequences’ on television. I could expound for paragraphs on the childhood activities I enjoyed at age 8. But still, my overall memory is ‘bored’.

I was bored so I learned how to plant seeds, clean wild mushrooms, sew Barbie doll clothes. I was bored so I figured out how to ride my bike to the library and read a new stack of books each week. I was bored so I held lemonade stands, collected unusual rocks, and learned how to build a castle from playing cards. I was bored, so I started making up stories and writing them down. I was bored, so I found my true self.

What I have deduced from this self-analysis, without help of any psychologists or intensive research studies including control groups and 30 year old volunteers, is that children were put on this earth to be bored. Since I accepted this fact a few years ago, summers have lost their faint air of anxiety. While saying I look forward to them would be, well, a lie, I can say I feel fortified. I am a mother to the un-bored. And to top it off, my sock bin is empty all summer long.

As my own kids head into the summer months, ready to shoot their “B” looks at me, with sighs, shuffling feet and body’s collapsing on the couch next to me, I have a fully stocked arsenal. I have a plan and I’m sticking to it. My goal this summer is to bore those children to distraction. I feel I not only have a good chance of reaching this goal, but I can pretty much guarantee you too, could have a 100% success rate in achieving this goal. Boredom—try it, you’ll like it.