Is There a Boredom Shortage?

          It’s that time.  Summer is ending, and families are running out of ways to entertain the kids, as many parents count the days until their stir-crazy kids can go back to school. 

          It’s as if we have all agreed to mount a War on Boredom.  We pack our kids’ lives so full of campouts and trips and sports and programs that their entire summer reads like the appointment calendar of a CEO.

          And today I’m calling it out.  Boredom is good.  Yep, there-- I’ve said it.  Boredom is absolutely necessary to a happy life.  But because it’s unpleasant, a bunch of silly parents 30 years ago decided it had to be avoided at all costs.  We began this era of “Supermoms” and “Superkids,” enrolling them in enrichment classes, competing to get into the right pre-schools, giving them every opportunity in every hour of the day to get jump on the competition.

          What a crock. Years ago no parent gasped in horror when a kid said he was bored.  Instead, the parent asked him what he was going to do about it.  And we made our own entertainment.

          The result?  Creative self-starters who knew how to roll up their sleeves and solve problems, instead of waiting for someone to entertain them.  We built forts, put on plays, made spook alleys in our basements, made stuff and sold it door-to-door, started lawn trimming companies, told jokes, taught littler kids how to tumble or dance, ran libraries out of our bedrooms, wrote poems, held art festivals, read books, went on scavenger hunts, designed puzzles, learned to cook, climbed trees, trained dogs, grew vegetables, told scary stories, and made up our own games to play.  For free.

          There was no limit to what our imaginations could conjure up—we could pretend to be forest fairies, spies, movie stars, cowboys, zombies.  We could watch clouds tumble by in the day, and stars gather at night. Granted, it was safer then to run around a neighborhood, but you could be just as creative on stormy days cooped up at home, simply because you had the mindset that your joy was up to you.  And that’s what’s missing today—the chance for kids just to think for themselves.

          When someone directs your life every minute of the day, you become an automaton.  You don’t plan or imagine because there’s no point—your schedule is already determined.  There are also adult-levels of pressure injected into these activities, far more than most kids should have to manage.  And then parents wonder why their child seems depressed and unmotivated.  Look at primates and big cats in zoos—they’ve lost their freedom and they know it.  And they act just like many kids today: Listless, flat, miserable.

          Having choices and self-determination is vital to happiness.  When those are stripped away, you are living in a prison of sorts.  And even though you go to Taco Bell and have your own bedroom and the latest sneakers… you don’t have the freedom to invent or dream.  Someone else is deciding everything for you.  What we need to do is allow kids to get good and bored.  Then watch and see what their brains can do.  You will be amazed.

Check out my website, jonihilton.com, and watch a few of my YouTube Mom videos.  You might even find some fun stuff to do on those wonderful, boring days!

Scene of the Crime

Imagine you have just been to see the new, suspenseful Mission Impossible movie.  Imagine you have come home, still a bit jumpy, your mind swirling with crime and mayhem.

          Now look in your guest bathroom  and see this:

          Not your everyday occurrence, can we agree?  So here are the possibilities I offer you:

1-   A very large man with big feet has somehow entered my home (after murdering somebody), then has hidden in my bathtub, only to mysteriously liquefy and flow down the drain.

2-   My cat has approximately 100% more hunting ability than I thought, has captured a human this time, but could only eat half of him.

3-   A fly fisherman ghost has walked right through my walls and has taken a bubble bath, but then has fallen asleep after the water drained out. And he’s still there.

4-   A space man with time transporting abilities has broken into my home, hidden in my bathtub, and then gotten sent to Medieval times, and I don’t mean the dinner show.

5-   An alligator wrestler has chosen my bathtub for his latest practice session (after all, there’s a lot of mud here), but has lost and the alligator is still creeping around my house. 

6-   Our son, Richie, who just became a geologist, has gone to investigate some goopy, swampy site, and has left his pants and boots here without first warning his mother. 

Allright, fine.  If you guessed # 6 you are right.  But you must admit it’s a bit disconcerting to find half a dead guy in your tub, no?  Even Dr. Seuss wrote a scary book about exactly this kind of discovery.  It’s called The Pale Green Pants and goes, “Then I was deep within the woods when, suddenly, I spied them. I saw a pair of pale green pants with nobody inside them!”

So I know I’m in good company, being concerned about this half-a-person-in-the-tub thing.  I also know it should be a requirement that geologists bring their mothers gemstones after each expedition, if only to quell their fears.  (If these scientists are so smart, how come they didn’t think of that?)

You can give your mother a wonderful surprise—better than a gemstone.  Okay, better than some gemstones.  Give her one of my books, available here.  Or buy one for yourself!

Shoe Fly

          Aha.  You thought I misspelled that, didn’t you?  You thought I meant Shoo Fly.  But no; today I am talking about my latest foray into the frustrating realm of BUYING SHOES.

          And let me just say that I am not one of these women with eight thousand pairs of shoes.  I like them, but I’m not an addict.  I do breeze by the shoe department and slow down when I see a gorgeous pair of high heels.  I’ll pick one up to admire it, suddenly notice it has a red sole, and then sigh.  This means trouble.  This mean it’s a Christian Louboutin high heel and will have an insane price tag. And I think we can both agree that a thousand dollars—or even seven hundred, as many of his are—is an insane price for a pair of shoes, even if they are gorgeous.

          So I try to shop where nobody’s ever heard of this Louboutin guy, nor his outlandish prices.  And it works pretty well, except for last week when I needed a new pair of tan sandals with a heel.  My old ones are at least eight years old, and though I stopped caring that they are no longer the most current style, I do care when they begin to fall apart.

          Up and down the aisles I went, hunting for a shoe with a medium heel, two or three inches high.  Men, you have no idea what women (or their backs) go through to stay current with the dictates of designers.  I couldn’t find anything shorter than five inches.  So, to quote the entire state of Utah (where I spent my childhood), I thought, “What the heck—I’ll just try on a tall one, and see how it feels.”

          Mind you, it has been at least ten years since I’ve worn Barbie pumps or any shoe with a five-inch heel.  I sat down, slipped my foot into a camel-colored beauty, buckled the ankle strap, and stood up.

WHAMMO!   My calf seized in an immediate Charlie Horse.  I tried not to yelp, collapsed back onto my chair, and then struggled to unbuckle the shoe. It would not unbuckle.  The pain was escalating as my calf cramped tighter and tighter.  Finally I got the shoe off (threw it, I think), and then tried to stand, barefoot.  But my foot was stuck in a toe-point, as if encased in an invisible ballet pointe shoe.  

And it was killing me. It took both hands and the strength of Hercules to finally bend my ankle, then stand on my foot, trying to stretch my calf out again.  I walked.  It throbbed.  I walked.  It throbbed.

Nobody knows where the term, “Charlie Horse” came from, but other countries have better names for it. It’s called the paralyzer in Portugal, the horse’s kiss or muscle hangover in Germany, donkey bite, water buffalo, or old woman in Italy, thigh hen in Norway, wooden leg in Finland and Israel, and rat in Guam.  Clearly these are places where women are trying to be fashionable, but have worn flat shoes too long.

I could feel the stares of young ingenues all around me, and yes I can read minds but I refuse to print what they were thinking.  Suffice it to say I ignored them.  Their time will come.

I continued the hunt for a sandal with a lower heel and finally found one. Fortunately, it also had a lower price.  So victory was mine.

And you may also experience the victory of successful shopping, simply by clicking here for my latest books.  No Charlie Horse required.

Things I Have Said Into My Fridge

          We’ve all done it.  We’ve stood in front of the fridge with the door open, gazing over the offerings as if at a bakery. 

Except it doesn’t look like a bakery.  It looks, depending on the day, cluttered, empty, dull, even sketchy.  A plethora of adjectives, but nothing good to eat.

You’d think this wouldn’t happen when you love to cook.  But it happens even more, because we cook yummy things that get gobbled up. And that leaves us gaping at the chilly shelves, wishing something new would materialize.  Occasionally an item works its way to the back, gets forgotten, and becomes a science experiment.  To be sure, refrigerators are receptacles of mystery.

So I kept a record of the things I have recently spoken, as I stood there letting all the cold out.  See if you’ve ever said the following:

Oh, man, no more pie? 

What IS this?

That’s applesauce?  Are you kidding me?

Where’s the peach cobbler?

Oh, boy, how old is this Cool Whip?

That casserole looks like the Gobi Desert.

Okay, liquefied lettuce is disgusting.

The cheesecake is already gone?

What IS this?

I don’t care if this salsa is expired. I’m eating it.

How did bread crumbs get in here?

Ah… butter.  What can I put you on?

Where did the strawberries go?

Popcorn? Seriously?

How old is this lunchmeat?

I wonder if this cream is still good.

Why isn’t there some cookie dough in here?

How can this meat still be frozen solid?

I never should have bought that beet jam.

What IS this?

Time to haul everything out, wipe down the shelves, toss the who-knows-what-this-is items, and maybe whip up some more goodies.  Only this time, I’ll hide them in the back of the crisper, behind some wilting celery that will provide the perfect camouflage.

Hey, I have a bunch of fridge tips on my YouTube Mom channel!  Check one out here, then scroll through for hundreds of other short Life Skill videos.

Billions of Micro-Beads

          Is it utterly impossible for a Hilton to travel on an airline without something ridiculous happening?  Apparently, yes.  Although St. Bob and I are not dead, yet, so I guess we can still hope for an uneventful trip someday.

          This time it was Bob.  He was flying from California where we live, to visit his brother in Mississippi.  And, since it was a red-eye flight, he brought  along one of those travel pillows for your neck.

          Here is where you stop reading, if you are sharing this story with a child.  Because we all want children to be law-abiding citizens, right?  We like stories that show good guys getting dessert, let’s say, and bad guys getting their just desserts. We do not want kids thinking that the minute you obey a rule, your whole life goes down the toilet.

          And yet, here’s what happened.  Bob decided to curl up with his pillow and get a little shut-eye.  Except  there was an annoying tag-- the scratchy tag that tells you not to remove it.

          Well, all these mattress and pillow tags also say, if you read the fine print, that the consumer can remove it, so Bob does.  And whammo—the seam splits open and the tiny, styrofoam micro-beads inside explode into the airplane.

          They cover Bob.  They cover his seat.  They cover the floor, and they cover the passenger next to him.  The entire seating area now looks like a snow globe. 

          Not only that, but these Styrofoam balls stick to you because of static electricity, something exacerbated by dry air, and airplanes are notorious for the driest air you can find.  Bob apologizes to his mortified seatmate, and the two of them begin trying to scrape off the little balls, none of which want to budge.  Like burrs, they hunker down into the weave of these guys’ clothing, and even a sticky lint roller would probably not pull them off.

          A flight attendant brings a damp towel, but what you really need are eight or nine damp blankets.  It’s a total disaster, and other passengers nearby are scooting into empty seats a good distance away, because spreading into the aisle are clearly round, white cooties.

          Bob arrives looking like the abominable snowman, and no one will walk within ten feet of him.  His seatmate is still madly trying to brush off the stubborn little beads.  Bob calls me from the terminal and I laugh for twenty minutes and beg him to take pictures.  He will not.

          But I think the city of Jackson should have declared a Snow Day, and sent a TV reporter to interview Bob.  Then I could have posted a video as well.  Pity.

You can read about similar disasters in my novel, Sisters in the Mix, however.  One of them has a TV cooking show and OCD.  Guaranteed to liven up your summer.

Are You a Grammar Nerd?

Today I have a fun chart for you, sent to me by the incredibly nice folks at Grammarly.  Check it out and see if you're a Grammar Nerd! (Then visit jonihilton.com and buy my books!)

Quick-- Duck!

          A funny thing happens when you decide to enter a competition.  Even one you begin as a lark.  You become, well, competitive.

          St. Bob was asked to help with a Rain Gutter Regatta at work.  In case you’ve never heard of this, it’s something Cub Scouts do, similar to their Pinewood Derby, but using little wooden boats that they physically blow to the finish line in a rain gutter.  Except it’s now become a fun bonding activity in the workplace, and adults are catching the floating fever.  Personnel are divided into teams, and someone is chosen on each team to design a boat they hope will win.

          Little blocks of wood are handed out, along with a tiny plastic sail and a mast.  You also get a rudder and a keel, both roughly the size of a guitar pick. You are to sand and paint this silly thing, glue it all together, then bring it back for the big race.  So Bob brings it home and places it on the island in our kitchen.

          And there it sits, waiting for its design.  We talk about colors.  We talk about stripes.  And then we decide it needs sponsors, like race cars have.  We clip tiny logos of sponsors from Car and Driver magazine, and glue them on.  We varnish them so they won’t float away the minute they hit water.  But something is still lacking.

          And then it hit me: I have a whole bag of miniature rubber ducks that I give to kids at church who are restless and tired of the stash of toys Mom is offering.  No, they do not squeak.  Although that would be even funnier.

          So we glue a duck onto the hull and I think it looks absolutely darling.  But St. Bob wants this duck to look fierce, to have swagger.  He needs a pirate eye patch and we need a Jolly Roger flag.  We add both and decide these are the winning touches that will guide our ship to First Place.

          Bob takes it to work.  Whoa.  Not surprisingly, some of the participants have taken this thing very seriously, and have created boats that could grace the cover of Motorboat Magazine.

          Soon it’s Bob’s turn to put our Quacker into the water, at which point it promptly quacks up and turns on its side.  

          How can this be?  It looks balanced!  Some sympathetic racers offer to glue some tiny weights on, and now it stays upright, at least.  But it competes against one of the ringer boats, and loses mightily. 

       Bob pulls the duck off and races just the duck, but it loses, also.  He glues the duck back on and calls me with the bad news.

          “Were we very last place?” I ask.

          “I think we might be,” he says, though they do not measure this.

          “Then we just have to declare a moral victory,” I say.

          “An immoral victory?” he asks.

          Either one.  And, at least we have something even better to give to some kid at church, now.  I’d say it’s a win-win.

If you want to see the design I REALLY wanted to give his boat, check out my YouTube Mom video here, and see how I painted our grandfather clock.  Or click here to see photos.