In Praise of Boredom

I don’t always say no but my kids pretty much know that if they ask to watch TV or use the computer or play their Nintendo DS on any but the hottest, ugliest rainiest days that the answer is going to be no.

And I don’t rush around signing them up for nine different classes to keep them occupied.  “If you’re bored, I can find you a chore,” they’ve heard me say so often that it’s probably physically painful for them to hear it repeated.

There’s good in boredom. When else do you develop an inner life? Laze around on the porch? Do word search puzzles? Pick a fight for no reason?

My dad tells the story of riding in the car with my sisters, who fought over one thing or another (“You’re on MY SIDE!”) for probably an hour. He still sounds frazzled (said sisters are now in their 40s) as he tells how he demanded to know why they were fighting.

One sister, apparently mystified, said: “There’s nothing ELSE to do.”

But sometimes there’s good in boredom. My kids, for example, invented a game they call Blanket Wrestling.

To play, each kid gets a quilt or sleeping bag that they put over their heads like ghosts. Then they wrestle. Blind. Anyone who peeks automatically loses. As a precaution, kids who feel short of breath yell: “I can’t breath” a few times and are let up although no one ever asks how kids who can’t breathe can shout.

Meanwhile, the husband and I take front row seats, often with a martini, as our kids and sometimes neighbor kids – looking like cartoonish amoebas – battle each other blindly. Children covered in Dora and Tweety bird quilts emit all the moans, groans and thumps of all-star wrestling and all the screaming hilarity of goofy 10-year-olds.

Daughter clearly gets out some anti-sibling aggression as she mercilessly jumps chest first on Son, who grunts with joy at the pummeling.

The cats – their eyes wide with horror at the uproar – crouch on top of furniture.

But that’s a winter, bad-weather game. When the weather is fine and you need the ultimate cardio workout, Man Hunt is your game.

Man Hunt – and inventing this was a group effort by the neighborhood kids – is a combination of tag and hide and go seek. And it must be played at dusk or after dark. Basically, someone is “It” and everyone hides in the dark to maximize the scariness. “It” looks for the other kids, who tear around like maniacs to avoid being caught. There’s complicated bits about being uncaught and etc. but I’m usually in the hammock chair on the porch hoping to catch of glimpse of Daughter – running with the ease of water going downstream – outpace boys two and three years older. No one can catch her.

Daughter also had a volcano phase.

For a couple of weeks, thanks to a baking soda and vinegar volcano in science class, daughter set off volcano after volcano in the back yard. She asked for spices, and I gave her an unwanted bottle of cayenne pepper. So there were cayenne pepper volcanos.

A friend’s mom had food coloring, and the volcanos started taking on strange hues.

The most magical boredom has come when one kid has to practice (usually Daughter) and the other is in the mood to play more. So Son will pull out his violin or clarinet (he’s not bad) and play along with Daughter, who is just beginning the flute.

The two together – especially on a simple madrigal – sound amazing. When this happens, I hide in the kitchen, pretending I’m busy with dishes and listen with glee.

But some boredom has been less happy.

There has not recently been a repeat of an incident of a couple of years ago where the kids dug up a dead baby possum (murdered by a leashed cat). I had buried the poor thing, and got a real shock two mornings later when I went out back with my coffee to admire the garden and found the dead possum lying, once again, on the back porch looking no better than when I’d buried it the first time. The kids had dug it up to show a babysitter and nobody had the sense to re-inter it.

But all this cleverness has a price and that price is mess. Watching TV, the only mess is possibly a missing remote.

The blanket wrestling? Obviously, blankets are left strewn all over the living room. 

The volcanos left odd white marks all over the patio until a heavy rain, and the baking soda and vinegar containers were dropped by seemingly nerveless fingers as soon as they were emptied and left. The digging tools are usually abandoned in the rain.

Will there ever be a boredom bad enough they’d actually tidy?