Did you miss me? Last week, posting to Threadquarters became a victim to time poverty. We’ve talked about this before, almost to the point of whining, so there’s no need to dwell on it. Life is so blessedly full, and there are more things to do than there are hours in the day to do them. What confounds me is when I hear people say, “There’s nothing to do here.”
Huh? Are you kidding?!
I’ve come to the conclusion that being a Midwesterner isn’t a privilege of birth, after all. People move here from other regions of the country all the time, observing that this is the lifestyle they’ve been looking for. You can’t tell them from the real deal. They aren’t trying to change us into New Yorkers or San Diegans, and they slide effortlessly into our communities by rolling up their sleeves and helping alongside us. They aren’t trying to fix us, because they know we ain’t broke.
Conversely, there are those born here who desire a move to where the postman only rings once, if at all. We have to stipulate teenagers for the sake of this discussion, because one of their stage-of-life tasks is to establish independence, and “getting out of this godforsaken town” tops their lists. In time, many move back to smaller towns, or at least the cities of the Midwest. Permanent transplants quizzically look for that feeling of “home” by connecting with other transplants in The South, New England, or The Pacific Northwest.
Yet I have been baffled by the comment, “There’s nothing to do.” Perhaps what they really mean is, “I’m bored.” We can help children with this, but when an adult says, “I’m bored,” our first response is to sadly shake our heads.
I don’t know how others matured their way out of being bored, but I was lucky enough to have The Peg. As a young, young girl, I would approach her with the inability to entertain myself.
“Maa-maaa, I’m bored.”
My remembering ear tells me I used a high-pitched voice, and elongated my words into a childhood singsong of complaint.
“What can I dooooo, Maa-maaaa?”
The Peg would ignore the whine and commence directly to the remedy. She would read to me, or help me look for the color crayons, sewing cards, or paper dolls, or she would introduce a new project for me to work on. That way, if I’d get bored later, I’d have a way to entertain myself. I was lucky that The Peg was my mom.
The Peg developed my project mentality, and the projects she gave me usually involved needlework. For instance, she would take a scrap of sheet out of the rag bag and have me press it flat. Then she would hold it up to the light, against a pane in the window, and trace a figure from one of my coloring books: a rose, a dog, a baby doll, or maybe a cat, a house, a child at play. Then she would hand me a recycled fruitcake tin of colored thread and a big-eyed needle, and would tell me to sew colors on the lines. She didn’t show me embroidery stitches, she just let me invent.
I’m not sure how old I was when I started inventing and embellishing textiles, but I remember a Trick or Treat bag I fashioned for myself when I was home on the half of the day I didn’t have kindergarten. It started when The Peg traced a pumpkin onto a muslin rag. I know the concept of embroidering on sheets wasn’t new to me that day at the age of five. As I embroidered, it occurred to me that I could sew some more muslin pieces together to make the Trick or Treat bag. I went back to the rag bag and found some suitable material, but I didn’t use my finished product for its intended purpose. It turned out to be too small, and I was hoping for a lot more treats than it would hold.
A child being bored isn’t anything new. My college roommate told me that her little nephew once stated emphatically, “I’m bored as a duck.” That was at least thirty years ago, and Hubba and I still use the bored-as-a-duck standard to define the term.
Bored adults, however, are a new wrinkle in my thinking. Maybe when these adults were bored as youngsters, their parents always entertained them rather than teach them to entertain themselves. Perhaps they bought them out of boredom with a new toy, new clothes, or even new friends.
All along I’ve assumed that being a Midwesterner blessed me with the values that were rooted in my youth. Everyone in my sphere was from homes like mine, with parents like mine. I’ve since observed that some Midwestern roots are weak, maybe even diseased. They need separating and care to encourage them to thrive.
Now I am more aware of those who didn’t have as healthy a root system. I remember a frail-looking little girl named Debbie who went to Wildwood Elementary with me, and whose mom was oft-divorced. The woman ignored her little girl, and Debbie would follow me around with the hunger of a lost puppy. At our house, The Peg would give her projects to work on, and Debbie momentarily felt worthy of the effort. There was the ill-tempered Darcy, an only child with every toy imaginable at her disposal. With two working parents, Darcy was left alone until well after dark, in her house with all those toys. I went home with her after school one day, but we didn’t stay inside with her toys. We roamed around outside, while Darcy looked for attention from neighborhood adults. I was bored as a duck, and I never went home with her after school again.
“There’s nothing to do.” That could mean, “I’m bored,” a reminder that not all our Midwestern roots are common. We need to separate the strong ones, prune away the weak ones, and fertilize the young ones with attention and involvement.
All that those bored people need anyway is a project, and we certainly have plenty of those around here! We can help them establish a healthy root system by assuring them they’ve come to the right place.
Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns February 2006
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