Shuffleboard, anyone?

This is the one and only week in which we have absolutely no programming. Summer camps are over for the summer. And while tackle football started yesterday, AJ has decided to take a year off. He’s playing flag football in a neighboring town instead, but they don’t start for another week or two.

AJ is not good at no programming. He’s constantly moaning about how there’s nothing to do. His default reaction is that he wants to watch TV or play video games. If that isn’t allowed (it’s usually not, unless it’s raining or someone is ill), he wants to play with a friend. He is almost desperate not to be left to his own devices. I find this deplorable. I don’t understand it and it makes me impatient, even angry. This kid who used to be interesting and interested has become lazy and witless. I know this is an unreasonable reaction, but it is a state of mind I fundamentally do not understand. This kid has been dying, DYING for unprogrammed time. Why can’t he make use of it? Keep your own damn self busy, boy! Do I look like the cruise director? Don’t answer that.

And so we’ve instituted some alone time for AJ, during which he has to find something to do that does not involve others’ involvement. He can read for some of the time — and he usually does. But he also needs to come up with something else. The penalty for saying, “but there’s nothing to do!” is that I get to decide what he does. If I decide, the project usually involves cleaning his room or other chores. He’s getting better at it, amazingly enough. Kind of a pity, though. I was enjoying some help with the housework.

I spent most of my summers when I was about his age near the top of a spruce tree with a book or two or nine. The tree grew across the street from my house, on the strip of easement land between Jeni and Isabel’s houses. Jeni and Isabel were a grade ahead of me. Jeni was a good friend when Isabel wasn’t around. Our parents were close friends (still are). Isabel didn’t take much notice of me when Jeni wasn’t around, although I was very interested in her because she seemed so elegant and glamorous. You know, for a fourth grader. But when Jeni and Isabel were together, I did better to make myself scarce, for I often ended up on the wrong end of their jokes.

I went to the library every couple of days in the summer, checking out anything that seemed interesting. I’d haul the books up the tree with me — the branches were perfectly placed for climbing and the heavy needles provided all the shade I needed from the summer heat. Sometimes I carried an apple up too, holding it with my teeth for later eating while leaving my hands free for books and climbing. I sat on a branch and leaned my back against the trunk. My mother groused at me about the state of my clothes, which were always smeared with irremovable sap. But I didn’t care much about that. It was the perfect way to spend a day.

If I wasn’t reading, I was probably at work on some project or another of my own devising. Or maybe I was at the town beach. I loved the beach in the winter, but it made me nervous in the summer. I wasn’t comfortable around all those kids from school with whom I didn’t get along so well and I was nervous about my swimming. But we usually set up our towels under a tree toward the parking lot and pretended to tan and cooled off in the water when we needed to. If we were lucky, we’d get to walk to the Snack Shack, which always smelled like French fries and coconut sun tan lotion, and buy ice cream.

What I didn’t do is sit around the house moaning about there being nothing to do. At least, I don’t think so. I’ll have to interview my mother for proper verification. But I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have gotten away with it. It was always very clear in our house that boredom was your own damn fault. If you didn’t want to be bored, then you should do something about it.

And I still feel that way. I’m hoping enough boredom will drive AJ to do something really interesting. But for now, he’s given up and moved on out to ring the doorbell of the boy across the street. I’m almost hoping he’s not home. I want to see what happens next.