Bored? Come to my house

March 11, 2010 Fairfield Daily Republic
The Other Side by Kelvin Wade

Every so often I’ll read that one of my nephews on Facebook says they’re bored. It’s a pretty common thing for kids to say they’re bored. But how can this be? We’ve created the most leisurely society in the history of the world.

How can any child in 2010 be bored? There are books, magazines, newspapers, television with hundreds of channels, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, Kindles, MP3 players, computers, the Internet, multimedia downloads, video games, cell phones, and texting. And that’s not even leaving the house!

When I was a kid, we'd play street football, go to the park or ride our bikes up to the since-defunct Eucalyptus Records or the Wherehouse to buy records (Yes kids, I mean the big black vinyl discs that you see in museums today). Or we'd call DART and for a dollar could go anywhere in town like the mall or the library.

Growing up, you didn’t dare tell our parents that you were bored. If our dad heard that we were bored, he’d find plenty for us to do. We’d end up washing the car, mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, vacuuming the living room or doing some other chore. Often it would only take one of us to lament that we were bored for our dad to put everyone to work. We’d all be doing some menial task while glaring at the one whose boredom launched us from leisure to labor.

Try pouring cement, cleaning out the garage and weeding a rock garden and see how bored you are. You're too tired to be bored.

One summer my mom volunteered me to work at our church to make sure I had something to do.

Our dad loved to keep us busy. For some insane reason I decided to work for my dad when he managed Orvis' Food and Liquor in Vallejo in the mid-eighties. He would tell me to run the register, fill a soda barrel with product and ice and stock the shelves, apparently all at the same time. Either he thought I was the Flash or an octopus.

There was a video surveillance system ostensibly to discourage potential robbers but the employees thought it really was my dad's way of keeping an eye on us from the back office and keeping us busy. If you finished with a customer and hesitated leaving the checkout counter, an intercom would crackle to life with my dad's booming voice, “Hey, you're not bored out there are you? I got a lot for you to do!”

During the summer months, my then 14 year old younger brother Scott must've told our mom he was bored because soon he was riding to work with me. Our dad had him putting in the same 12 hour days I was, probably in violation of half a dozen child labor laws.

But I get it. Our dad couldn't sit around and do nothing when he was a kid. When he was a child in East Texas he had to work picking crops in the blazing sun to help feed his family. A man who grew up being too busy to be bored couldn't relate to kids with so many entertainment choices they couldn't decide on what to do.

So to this day when I hear someone lament that they're bored and have nothing to do, I secretly want to invite them to my house where I can work their fingers to the bone.

Being bored is a luxury. Peace.