Boredom: The Silent Killer
I can feel it creeping in on me, like a dense fog on the moor in some Charles Dickens book. It's settling down, saying hello, but not taking 3 pages to describe a bird in a tree and how the morning sunlight hits its wings just right. Only Dickens did that. Great Expectations in high school. Oy. I went back and underlined Great Expectations, because that's how it's supposed to be, you see. Stay in school kids, don't do drugs.
No, it is not Charles Dickens that haunts me. It isn't even Nathaniel Hawthorne, or Joseph Conrad, which would make sense if it were because I badmouthed their books so badly I'm sure it must have made them turn over in their grave at least a little. I have a feeling that happens a lot to great classic authors when the AP summer reading list comes out across the country, and the collective groans and sound of post it notes being stuck to novels is all that will be heard from the bedrooms of studious high school educatees. The forgetful ones (such as myself) will have to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest the week before school, which will not prove to be a huge challenge as it is a terrific book that is very easy to get in to. Give it a good read some time. Alas, once again, I digress.
My Estella, my scarlett letter, my personal wrath of Kahn,if you will, is my sense of boredom. I have read 3 books in the past 2 weeks, beaten 2 games, gone to the mall 4.7 times (one time I got almost all the way there and then turned back), been to Soni's once, asked people to hang out countless times (and most usually get a no in response), and I still have trouble filling the hours. It's not that I can't think of things to do. I just have a hard time imagining a positive reaction coming from my mother when she comes home from work and finds me in the driveway with every single cardboard box on our property, about a mile of tinfoil, and a can of silver spray paint because I decided I was going to make a cardboard robot costume. She just doesn't understand things like that. (Dad would be an easy one to bypass, because I think by now he's learned to just not as questions. Especially when I'm walking around the house in lab coat and goggles. How would Jeff react? Pscht, he'd help me.)
I've taken to talking to the cat for a little while each day. To anyone who is not personally familiar with my cat, this may seem like an inane activity and quite possibly the confession of a mad individual, but trust me, my cat is actually quite the conversationalist. I've been watching her progress through her inner personal conflict of how she feels about being tickled with blades of grass. Half the time, she bats playfully at the grass as I make it scurry in front of her and tickle her belly, and the other half of the time, she is downright insulted by the mere idea of interacting with sociable grass and thinks it a waste of time. We did make a breakthrough decision with wheat-like blades. Those are simply out of the question. Also, longer blades of grass are much more threatening than shorter ones, according to her logic. I've also tried talking to the dog more lately, but in her old age, the conversation always turns to her yelling about my generation (specifically me), and I have to tell her to back down outta my grill. I've actually kind of been missing my pet pigeon, Erogalus the Destroyer of Nations. He was such a cool bird. He liked getting baths, and after I bathed him, I would wrap him up on a towel, sit in the front yard in the sun, and lay him on my chest and we would just chill. He never tried to fly away or was threatened, and we had many philosophical discussion about the reasons why he found chasing beetles across the ground so darn interesting. I still maintain that it was a swarm of beetles that came into the pigeon coop in the night and killed him secretly.
I've completely lost sight of where I was going with this. I don't think I even had a direction in the first place. For some reason whenever I sit down and try to put together words that make correct sentence flow, yet maintain a sense of dignified prose, I'm entertained. Just another piece of evidence that should direct one to believe that I indeed am meant to be an English teacher. Perhaps tomorrow when I'm meandering the streets thinking about nothing in particular, I'll wander into an interesting store I've never seen before, or find a new tree to climb. Whatever it is, I'm sure it will suffice for a day, until I get bored and start to re-consider the cardboard robot idea.
No, it is not Charles Dickens that haunts me. It isn't even Nathaniel Hawthorne, or Joseph Conrad, which would make sense if it were because I badmouthed their books so badly I'm sure it must have made them turn over in their grave at least a little. I have a feeling that happens a lot to great classic authors when the AP summer reading list comes out across the country, and the collective groans and sound of post it notes being stuck to novels is all that will be heard from the bedrooms of studious high school educatees. The forgetful ones (such as myself) will have to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest the week before school, which will not prove to be a huge challenge as it is a terrific book that is very easy to get in to. Give it a good read some time. Alas, once again, I digress.
My Estella, my scarlett letter, my personal wrath of Kahn,if you will, is my sense of boredom. I have read 3 books in the past 2 weeks, beaten 2 games, gone to the mall 4.7 times (one time I got almost all the way there and then turned back), been to Soni's once, asked people to hang out countless times (and most usually get a no in response), and I still have trouble filling the hours. It's not that I can't think of things to do. I just have a hard time imagining a positive reaction coming from my mother when she comes home from work and finds me in the driveway with every single cardboard box on our property, about a mile of tinfoil, and a can of silver spray paint because I decided I was going to make a cardboard robot costume. She just doesn't understand things like that. (Dad would be an easy one to bypass, because I think by now he's learned to just not as questions. Especially when I'm walking around the house in lab coat and goggles. How would Jeff react? Pscht, he'd help me.)
I've taken to talking to the cat for a little while each day. To anyone who is not personally familiar with my cat, this may seem like an inane activity and quite possibly the confession of a mad individual, but trust me, my cat is actually quite the conversationalist. I've been watching her progress through her inner personal conflict of how she feels about being tickled with blades of grass. Half the time, she bats playfully at the grass as I make it scurry in front of her and tickle her belly, and the other half of the time, she is downright insulted by the mere idea of interacting with sociable grass and thinks it a waste of time. We did make a breakthrough decision with wheat-like blades. Those are simply out of the question. Also, longer blades of grass are much more threatening than shorter ones, according to her logic. I've also tried talking to the dog more lately, but in her old age, the conversation always turns to her yelling about my generation (specifically me), and I have to tell her to back down outta my grill. I've actually kind of been missing my pet pigeon, Erogalus the Destroyer of Nations. He was such a cool bird. He liked getting baths, and after I bathed him, I would wrap him up on a towel, sit in the front yard in the sun, and lay him on my chest and we would just chill. He never tried to fly away or was threatened, and we had many philosophical discussion about the reasons why he found chasing beetles across the ground so darn interesting. I still maintain that it was a swarm of beetles that came into the pigeon coop in the night and killed him secretly.
I've completely lost sight of where I was going with this. I don't think I even had a direction in the first place. For some reason whenever I sit down and try to put together words that make correct sentence flow, yet maintain a sense of dignified prose, I'm entertained. Just another piece of evidence that should direct one to believe that I indeed am meant to be an English teacher. Perhaps tomorrow when I'm meandering the streets thinking about nothing in particular, I'll wander into an interesting store I've never seen before, or find a new tree to climb. Whatever it is, I'm sure it will suffice for a day, until I get bored and start to re-consider the cardboard robot idea.