Different people have different ways to mark the beginning of summer. For some, it’s the opening of the pool. For others, it’s the first backyard cookout. As for myself, however, I have always considered the first sign of summer to be the first time I hear a child say the words, “I’m bored.” (This can also be the first sign of winter or spring break, or even, if the child is dull enough, the first sign of a long weekend, but for most children it means the beginning of summer vacation.)
I’m always a little bit amazed (and a lot annoyed) when I hear a child say these words out loud. While it’s not as bad as saying “I’m dull,” it is certainly close enough to make me cringe. In fact, I wonder that they can even say such a thing without dying of shame. Although who knows: perhaps, for other people (and other people’s children), this isn’t such an embarrassing statement to make. Heck, maybe they feel the same embarrassment for me that I do for them when I say something like “I don’t like shopping,” but somehow, I doubt it.
Luckily for me, I haven’t heard the “B” word from my own children for several years now—not because they are perfect children, of course, but rather because they have learned, painfully and over time, that my usual response to that statement is to tell them a long and even more boring story. Well, boring to them at least: I think it’s fascinating and inspiring. What I tell them is the story of how J.K. Rowling came up with the idea for Harry Potter.
Here’s the story: Once upon a time J.K. Rowling was taking a boring train ride from her boring job as a secretary back to her boring house when the train was delayed for three boring hours because of an accident up the line. (Was it a boring accident? Probably—at least to everyone who was not directly involved. No, scratch that: it was probably even boring to them.) Since this happened in the days before internet (really!), or even before cell phones were common (double really!), she had no Angry Birds, no Facebook, and no Words With Friends to distract her. And, since she had only planned on being on the train for a short time, she didn’t even have a book. All she had was her boredom, or rather, in her case, her imagination, which, unlike 3G, always gets reception, no matter how far out in the boonies you may be.
So what did she do? Well, she used her imagination to create the story of someone else—a young boy who was also on a train. A young boy who was a wizard and didn’t know it. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The first few times I told this story to my kids they rolled their eyes and said, “So, I’m supposed to go write “Harry Potter”?
“Of course not,” I answered. “’Harry Potter’ has already been written. Go create something else.” At which point they would usually go create a mess. But that was okay (kind of, sort of), because at least then they were doing something besides whining to me about how “bored” they were. Now that they are older (and while not necessarily wiser, certainly cannier), they never tell me they are bored anymore, and so never have to hear the “How J.K. Rowling Came to Write Harry Potter,” story. And while I’m not so smug as to believe I solved the problem of them being bored, I am smug enough to believe that I definitely solved the problem of them telling me about it.
Which, as far as I’m concerned, is just as good.