My mother used to say: “There are no boring things; only boring people.” (Usually in response to my complaint about being bored because we didn’t have a T.V.) I’ve taken this concept to heart my entire life since and am pretty awesome at keeping myself busy — at least mentally. I can entertain myself in a dark windowless box with only my imagination for company. This is one of the reasons that meditation is both easy and incredibly hard for me.
I’ve always thought that this quality would come in handy if I ever ended up in prison or stuck on a desert island. However, I recently discovered that I am a fraud when it comes to being impenetrably unbore-able. There is, it turns out, one situation that induces acute boredom for me: FISHING.
My dad is out visiting, and since we have literally nothing in common, I have been scrambling to find things we might enjoy doing together. Luckily, my good friend Maynard shares one hobby with my dad that I coerced him into letting us piggyback along for. So to be fair, this was absolutely my idea and Maynard really did his best to be accommodating, despite the fact that I spent probably the entire time complaining about:
Being cold- Being hungry
- Having to pee
- Being bored
And, out of the 10+ hours* that Maynard and Curt were fishing off the pier in Tiburon, I only actually tried to be a good sport for about ten minutes, total. The rest of the time, I sat shivering in my East Coast down puffy jacket in the nearest coffee shop, drinking hot Earl Grey tea with milk and playing Words With Friends on my iPhone.
I’ve never been a recreational activities sort of girl and I should know by now to try not to act cool about maybe potentially being one after all. But a nice leisurely day of casting lines on the Bay in December… that sounded kind of poetic in my pre-mind.
Sadly, it turns out that my imagination’s ability to babysit itself can be overridden quickly by biting cold Bay Area December weather and the merciless damp rocks that I was sitting on. (I have to admit that my dad’s really awful Polack jokes didn’t help.)
I am duly humbled and must redact my original statement about how I don’t get bored, or at least modify it: I don’t get bored… as long as I’m in my comfort zone.
On the positive side, it’s nice to realize that, in the absence of a parental visit to remind me how utterly uncool I really am, I’ve found a nice sort of harmony in my
life so that the boredom rarely manifests. I’m a little worried about that desert island scenario, though.
* Just so I don’t get in trouble for hyperbole I must confess that “we” were fishing for about two hours, not ten. But, it felt like ten.
i love that your dad is wearing a ‘grumpy’ sweatshirt!