On Boredom (Part One)

“Being bored just means that you’re too boring to think of something interesting to do.’

I’m paraphrasing, but these are, pretty much, the words that drove me utterly insane, as a child.  They would be directed my way, courtesy of my mother, right after I was guilty of saying the words, “I’m bored,” and being so full of shit as to expect sympathy.

I’ll grant my parents this: they were never the type to start an argument with the words, “in my day…” – things like:

1:         “in my day, we built ox wagons from a dog’s jawbone to relive the heady days of traversing the Drakensberg,” or

2:         “in my day, we would fuck cousins just to have an interesting family member at Christmas, in five years,” or

3:         “in my day, I was arrested while naked and holding nothing more than a bag of fertilizer, diesel fuel and a copy of The Catcher in the Rye,”

 

although that last one would have made me pay attention circa 16-years-of-age, or so.

Coming from my mother, however, stating that boredom was in the eye of the beholder stung, somewhat.

This is because of her parents.

Let me pre-empt a bunch of familial criticism by saying, right now, that I adore(d) my maternal grandparents, warts and all.  They were / are, some of the most fascinating specimens of humanity it has ever been my privilege to meet.

(In case you hadn’t noticed, courtesy of the cumbersome way in which I am trying to deal with tense, my mother’s mother is still alive, while her father is less so.  From here on out, I shall be dealing with both in the present tense, unless the passage deals with a specific grandparent).

Being born in Europe, at a specific time, they are also filled with interesting stories.  Even though it makes me feel like a bit of a ghoul, I have to admit to a certain fascination at the tales that come from their mouths, and the mouths of those that knew them.

I heard a story about my grandfather, quite recently, that filled me with an indescribable sense of loss at missing something I never knew I had.  The man died when I was about fifteen – long before I had developed a sense of curiosity of life to counter-balance my curiosity of female genitalia.  Apparently, the man was imprisoned in a German work camp.  The exact details as to the location and nature of the camp elude me, but I know that:

1:         paint was manufactured there, and

2:         it can’t have been the most secure of camps (the reasoning behind my deductions shall soon become apparent.)

Anyway, this young man, who was born in 1929, mind – which means he was ten years of age at the outbreak of the war, and perhaps sixteen at its end – was forced to work in a factory to support the German war effort.

(Of course, none of this is, in any way, unique to a horde of other, sad, stories from this time.)

Anyway, the young man in question took it upon himself to kick over a rather large drum of paint.  This, alone, would be capable of causing some consternation on the part of the respective SS-officers in charge, so very concerned with their productivity figures, but he really upped the ante: the paint was aimed to make its way into machinery, onto production lines, over schematics.  In other words, the very analytical nature of the SS mind would have been going “MEIN GOTT!  ZE ENTIRE PAINT PRODUKZION FOR ZE THIRD REICH IS TOTENTAAL UPGEFUCHT!”

(Or something.  I’m sure a bit of nuance gets lost in the translation.)

So, while these peeps are running around, trying to ensure that they continue to live up to the Aryan / Germanic / Nordic ideals espoused by Herr Himmler… my grandfather makes do his escape from a Nazi work camp.

I wish, so very dearly, that he could have related this story to me in person, with his typical attempts at sounding nonchalant while being, in his heart, the exact opposite.

My grandmother’s stories, while being far less dramatic in terms of what us scriptwriters call “beats,” are perhaps harder to believe, simply due to their unrelenting darkness.

Her tales carry no heroics.  They hold no twists and turns for those that desire retribution for the “bad guys”.  They are tales of loss, and hardship, and loss repeated, told by a woman who is either incapable, or unwilling, to remember the details.

They are stories of humanity told without the need to have a happy ending.

I shan’t repeat them, here, both out of respect for her privacy as well as a fear that I am incapable of telling them properly.  Perhaps when I am older.

Perhaps never.

Anyway, all of this morbid storytelling has a point: neither of my maternal grandparents were the type that one would want to visit, as a six-year-old.  Obviously, their stories would have been great had a six-year-old the ability to place them into proper context.

No.  Unfortunately, having to rebuild one’s life in the aftermath of the greatest fuckup that mankind has ever been capable of perpetrating holds another difficulty: the lack of bric-a-brac.  It’s harder to collect things, when you’re selling things for food.

There were no comics.  There were no toys.  There was sheet music, and the singing of hymns should you have been unlucky enough to visit my grandmother over Christmas (both of them were musicians / music teachers).

Now imagine, if you will, what it might have been like being their daughter.  My mother, in other words.

Now, imagine, if you will, the sense of guilt when your mother tells you that boredom is your own, damn fault, and nothing to do with the crappy toys you have in the canvas suitcase under your bed.

(A digression, if I am permitted: my bedroom was not, exactly, a cornucopia of toys.  I inherited my mother’s study when she was done reading for her LL.B.  Which meant that I, for the first time, had a space devoid of my sister and her bloody bossiness, which was great.  It also meant, less excitedly, that I shared a room with shelves of books hosting those tomes of literature that don’t often make it onto those shelves near the dining room table.  It is here, for the first time, that I read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick – I didn’t understand too much of it, other than the fact that Ahab really wanted that fucking whale.  I like to think that subsequent readings have granted me a deeper understanding of the text – he really, really, wanted that fucking whale with a passion.)

I have, over time, developed the ability to keep myself pretty entertained: mainly by talking to myself, which I do aloud, with a goodly amount of circumlocution, counter-argument, and research to ensure that I am arguing against myself with a proper amount of academic authority.

On occasion, though, against all my better judgment, I still find myself feeling bored.

What now?

(I need to stop, here, as other duties are calling, making me less bored.  I shall continue this, at some stage.  Probably when I am next feeling bored.)