I’m bored

Editor’s note: The following column originally ran in the Aug. 19, 2010 edition of the Daily Mail.

I think I have written about this before but I am going to risk boring you with it again. I feel so strongly about this subject that l have to get it out of my system. My problem is that I am bored with hearing children and youth telling each other, and their adult companions that they are bored.

Recently, I was with two pre-schoolers and their grandmother on an outing. Another grandmother type friend joined us for the afternoon. We went to the movies and saw “Cats and Dogs,” or is it “Dogs and Cats”? At the theater, each of them had popcorn and a drink. After we left the theater their grandmother took them to Wal-Mart where each was allowed to select one toy to buy and take home.

I had done my own shopping in a nearby store while they were making these selections.

When we met back at the car we had to wait a few minutes for the third adult to finish her shopping and join us. The younger child very quickly let us know that she was bored. We hadn’t waited even 10 minutes yet, but she felt she was bored.

I couldn’t help wondering what a 3-year old knew about boredom. I know we all have selective memories but I honestly can’t remember ever being bored when I was young. I always had a book I wanted to read, or enjoyed just watching people around me when we were away from home. I cherished times when I was left to my own devices to pass the time.

Then I started polling my children who are now in their early middle-years about their memories of boredom. They freely admitted being restless when the whole family had to sit in the car in a hospital parking lot while their father/minister was making a hospital call. Sometimes we would go into the lobby to wait but with four young people it worked better just to stay in the car and avoid spending time trying to get back together when Lester was through with his call. But none of them remembered feeling bored at these times; impatient maybe, but not bored, because there was always a lot of activity going on around us that was interesting to watch. And we would make a game about saying that, “Daddy will be the fourth person who comes out that door.” Sometimes we were even correct.

The children today have cell phones that do all sorts of things, electronic music players that they plug into their ears, computers with hundreds of games, television with around-the-clock cartoons, and portable DVDs that can play a whole movie in almost any location. But they are easily bored.

Something is wrong with this picture.

I asked Lester, who grew up in the Ozarks where the whole family had to work very hard, to tell me about situations where he was bored. He could not recall ever being bored, even in adulthood. He always has something else he wants to do. I pushed him by asking if he didn’t get bored when he was working in the field. (This would have been walking behind a horse or mule or just himself with a hoe, or plow. He replied that he certainly got tired sometimes and was glad when the work was done or when night time came but he didn’t think he was bored.

Are we giving our children so much entertainment that they don’t know how just to enjoy minutes with no artificial fun provided?

So I get bored now when I hear. “I’m bored!”