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Commentary
Boredom has benefits in summer
By Bobby Hart
Published:
Thursday, June 26, 2003
Bobby Hart
As July peeks its head around the corner, I've felt myself fall into a bit of a midsummer rut.
My same old schedule of everyday activities is beginning to hinder and annoy me. From many of the blank stares and lost expressions I see on many students' faces, I can tell that many of you are beginning to feel the same way. Sure, I'd trade my fall class load for my summer work schedule any day, and The Fourth of July is always a hoot. There's just something about late June that makes me feel lost (I'm sure the Twins are feeling the same way).
I began to think back to the old days for a hint of inspiration. Back before work, alcohol and even cars were part of the routine. Back when creativity was a must in order to keep sanity on a hot day.
I found myself in my best friend's garage in seventh grade. Usually we'd sit on his roof, but the shingles were too hot on this day. It was a house and a group of friends that I'd been accustomed to since grade school.
We seemed to have run out of all possible ideas for something to do, which was nearly impossible for a group of creative delinquents such as ourselves. Usually we'd seek entertainment by walking around aimlessly at the Maple Grove mall. (It was a shell of what it is today, but it served its purpose). Pranking drive-through windows and throwing K-Mart shopping carts off the roof of a half-constructed nursing home were usually on the top of the agenda, but on this day we had no ride.
We sat in the garage for hours straining our brains in the heat. Finally, in a fit of frustration, I picked up a wooden piano leg and smacked a worn tennis ball across the street.
As we watched the ball sail into the neighbor's driveway, a giant light bulb lit up in our heads simultaneously. Within a matter of hours we added bases, boundaries, and more players until we had our first game of stickball, or as we originally called it "shaftball." It certainly wasn't our last.
"Shaftball" became a ritual, carrying with it some of my best childhood friends and memories through the years.
When my best friend moved a couple years later, the game followed, and as the years passed by, the field only got bigger. "Shaftball" evolved from a game played by four people in a driveway with a chipped stick of wood into two teams of at least five players facing off in a cul-de-sac with a smoothly crafted and partially taped broom handle.
Brooklyn style stickball had nothing on us. We sported white tank tops and old baseball caps while welcoming (and daring) anyone who passed to join in. "Shaftball" was our game and we felt on top of the world while playing it.
To this day, we still find time every year to get a game going (of course the games these days usually involve a couple cases of beer.)
I know it sounds like a sappy rip-off of "The Sandlot," but my point is that some of the best times in life come from the stupidest things you do when you're bored. Believe it or not, there are other things to do besides playing Tiger Woods Golf on your Playstation all day and getting drunk at the same old bars all night.
Go out in the sun and do something with your summer. Not enough money for 18 holes on a swanky golf course? No problem. The best things in life are cheap and sometimes a little weird.
Here's my favorite all-time summer equipment list (you can even be creative and mix some of these): Bocce Ball set, $25; Badminton rackets and a shuttlecock, $1; Slip and Slide, $14; Nerf football, $6; General Admission River Bats ticket, $5; beer at a River Bats game when the "beer batter" strikes out, $1.63; a lifetime of memories started from a wooden piano leg and a dirty tennis ball, priceless.
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