I once had a high school teacher who introduced me the phrase, "If you're bored, you're boring."
Having always contemplated the value of such a slogan, the reality finally rang true this weekend.
With power out starting Thursday night and still not yet back, my apartment remains cold, dark and without electricity. Yet, I've had more fun finding ways to entertain myself over the past half week than all year.
I also found out which people I know are truly boring. If you constantly said things like "this sucks," or were complaining how "unbelievably miserable" you were the last few days, it's because you are boring.
Yeah! We have no power, it sucks, get over it! Find something to do, the circumstances don't make having fun impossible.
For five days I have been forced to live without my computer, my heat, and get this campus apartment residents, without a charged cell phone!
So what!
Are any of those things required to have good time?
My Friday started with hooking a tow-rope to several tree branches and dragging them to clear the road. Maybe not the safest move ever, but damn it was fun. For food I joined some friends, scrounged up hotdogs and charcoal, and did some evening grilling. As would only be appropriate, we followed that up by a hard-fought candlelight monopoly match.
When is the last time we've been able to visit our childhoods like that? Sure there may have been a few Bud Lights involved this time around, but c'mon!
The next day, after half my roommates had evacuated to their parents homes, I again fired up the grill, boiled some water and made some cocoa for a few of my friends who remained. We loaded up in my 4x4 and took to the road. On a mission to find food, we donned "funny hats" for no reason at all (except because it was fun) and cruised.
Soon we realized that this was a fruitless endeavor. No complaints came though as we decided to merge forces with another house on the street, raid our refrigerators, and have a joint breakfast.
We tasked out some respective jobs, and soon a full meal was served on paper-plate platters. All of breakfast there was no television to distract us; our only entertainment was the long lost art of good conversation.
An afternoon of potential boredom now led us on a journey to my parents' "farm" in the southern tier. Shooting guns at squash (sorry gun-haters and squash lovers), taking pictures with an Alpaca, and a warm meal highlighted the trip. As we left, my mom begged us to stay, but our response was immediate, "we've got a city to get back to."
Sure, we were headed back into the power-outage-causing tangle of trees, but we had big plans of making our own excitement. Now armed with a portable propane stove and a few extra snacks, we had everything we needed.
However, for a night, we succumbed to the idea of a warm slumber, and spent the overnight hours hanging out in Hadley with some very hospitable hosts (Thanks again).
But after playing cards there again the next evening I had to get back to my castle.
After leaving my roommates there and heading to my house on Winspear, I settled down on the couch with a flashlight and a book. I knew that school was cancelled the next day, and I was looking forward to another 24 hours of "make our own fun."
Suddenly there was a noise outside; my roommates had left Hadley, claiming they were not going to leave me to the cold "electricless" house, or as they yelled from the dark stairwell on the way upstairs, "we never leave a man behind."
We drank some beers, shared some stories and then camped out in the living room. It was almost reminiscent of one of those childhood living-room forts that I'm pretty sure all of us made during our youth.
The next day and night it was more of the same, a few games of "name that quote," some out-loud flashlight reading and another living-room fort night ended our Octo-Blizzard '06 memories.
But these memories are ones I'm most certain never to forget. Not only did I learn boredom is one's own fault and avoidable, I also learned that with a little ingenuity, a few cold beers and people who don't rely on society to have fun, you can enjoy yourself no matter what happens.
