Made Up

Ramble on Childhood Boredom

Summers were made out of boredom. We rode our bikes or skateboards around, looking for things to do. Anything really. Everything was mostly up to us, my siblings, my friends and I. No summer school, usually, and no summer camps. Just wandering. We’d look for skate spots, cool trees to climb, finding anything we could to make games and adventures from. There was the elementary school by our house, full of small skate spots and a neighbor with enough of a gripe for the noise to threaten to call the cops nearly every week we tried to skate near his house. That’s usually where we went when the heat was too heavy for a long walk. 

The heat, as July turned to August, burned in the sunlight, but the shade was as refreshing sometimes as water, as if each shadow had its own little breeze.

There weren’t any real bodies of water nearby. We had a creek just outside our backyard, but not even a minnow could survive in those still waters that vanished as the heat made us consider stepping into its green and murky scum. The closest place to jump into was an abandoned dam of some kind that filled up just enough to dunk our bodies in. We’d go there, sometimes walk upstream and hunt for tadpoles or crawdads. We’d dry off and try to do kickflips on the torn concrete dam.

The summers were often like this, full of wandering and wondering what to do next in a daze of heat and boredom where each pleasant little event slipped on into the next. Or maybe that’s just how I remember it now, so far away from that kid that lived that life. But, the summers were mostly like this, boring with not too much drama. Maybe we’d find ourselves in a standoff with a deer, but beyond that, nothing much else. So, we did whatever we could to entertain ourselves, making up little worlds. 

I’d sit by my sibling and watch them make movies with our Beanie Babies, or l’d listen to their stories of being attacked by rabid squirrels or angry bucks. Or we would make things, handmade wooden guns our dad would help us cut out, paintings, little mutants made from the torn parts from old action figures we were bored with already.

The boredom was key. It taught us how to invent, and what creating meant in the most simple and basic of ways. It helped us learn just how to be at ease and entertained with what came to our minds. It taught us what we enjoyed, what shapes we liked, what colors we preferred, what sorts of world we felt most a part of, only influenced by what surrounded us. We were bored so we made things, my family and friends, like many of us then. We found ways of cooling off outside of water. We biked around looking for the best blackberry patches. It was summer in childhood before our lives had begun. I’m sure many of us had childhoods like this. I’m not sure how many still exist now.

I can't imagine what those summers would be like if I had a smartphone at that age. having not just the world around myself to imprint itself onto me, but every possible opinion and take. Truly, I don’t know who or how I would be as a person, because even today the pull of the phone feels too enticing, too interesting and insane to not stare at. It’s full of so many ideas and opinions that it’s hard not to get frustrated or amused, filling your head with ideas you don’t have to create. The focus and agency it strips from our thoughts seems both small and profound to me. And here I am writing mostly for a screen and in a world that only wants the hottest of takes, regardless of their quality. Here I am, unsure if the good of these rectangles really outweighs the bad.

I’m not saying that the 90s or the 2000s were any better a time to be alive, only that as a child left to your own impulses, there was so much room for my mind to wander, and I wonder how much of that meandering is truly left in us. 

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I recently read Summer Solstice by Nina MacLaughlin which reminded me of my early childhood summer boredom. It’s a short afternoon read and a great little escape of a book— living outside of time. MacLaughlin is not trying to fix today’s age or give a soliloquy on climate change or smartphones. She’s just capturing that simple feeling of summer heat.