Boredom

Someone shared something on Facebook today that said the original play station was the creek. I know it was for us.  As a kid I am sure I got bored, but I don’t remember it.
I do not know what happens these days but school holidays were a week in May, two weeks in August and forever at Christmas.  It was really about six weeks but it may have well been forever.
That time was the real challenge for boredom.  Especially growing up in the north, when the rain set in.  If we had enough rain though, the creek next to our place flowed.  It was great just to swim in, but we would grab things that floated and have races down the water course.  When we had a lot of rain that was not possible as the creek could more correctly be described as a torrent.  Where we swam was just beyond our place.  Next to our place was scary.
We were fortunate in that our house was the last, with bushland at the back of our place that led up Castle Hill (which we climbed, as the centre part could be traversed without ropes.)
As I say I don’t remember getting bored, but I did get up to mischief.  At that place I saw how quickly a fire could move.  I started it, and when I realized it was out of control, I asked if I could visit a friend and was denied.  The fire brigade came three times to that fire.  It got into a really big bamboo grove in a place up the road.  I am sure the people in that place had a sleepless night.
I always found boredom really hard to cope with at work.  I very much preferred to have too much to do than too little.   Too much and the day flew, too little and the day dragged.  Merril shared something with me the other day that makes me know I am not alone.
Inventing games helped us stave off boredom.  We were always the heroes of course.  When we were not inventing games, we were playing sport.  We had a few parks near-by and a cricket practice net.  I played team hockey, squash, cricket, tennis, soccer, and Aussie Rules.  I was not the best at any of them, but I was not the worst either.  I had my front teeth knocked out playing hockey (I ran all the way home when I won our club best back in under 12s), my nose broken playing squash (we called ourselves Constellations – a group of stars), felt out of my league playing soccer (I filled in for an older team.  The uniform made me feel tough though) and served a ball smack in the back of the head of my partner playing tennis (it is amazing how far a ball can bounce off a head). 
I have no complaints about my childhood.  I guess I did not have time to get bored.  It was nothing if not eventful.