sad little mice

My poor sad little mice! Oh how frustrating to be trapped in the house on such a sweltering hot Summer day! (Until just recently, we had a ten-day right ole' fashioned heat wave - BOO - and it was too hot even to go outside.) For this photo, which I admittedly staged, I told the boys to lie on their beds and look 'bored.' I think the end result is they look a little closer to dead or catatonic, but you take what you can get. The reality is frequently (during the summers especially) I will walk past their room on my way to the kitchen and find them in very similar positions and with very similar expressions on their faces, and upon asking what's wrong, one of them (usually Forrest) will say, "I'm bored." Oh, to be bored! Think about it--it actually sounds vaguely pleasant! To have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do, nowhere to be, no one calling out to you asking you for help, advice, involvement, supervision ... and to just sit there, letting your mind drift through the endless possibilities of what could possibly fill your time, contemplating each opportunity and holding it up to the sun where it catches the light and sparkles like a precious jewel... I wish I was bored more often. But I digress. I'm supposed to be telling you about The Chickens.

Chickens? Well, perhaps I should digress further and explain one of the silliest nicknames in our family. It's actually a reference to one of my favorite films, the legendary 'Gone With The Wind,' specifically the scene in which Scarlett has just bravely shot the Yankee intruder in the grand stairwell of her family's Plantation home, called Tara. Discovered by her sister-in-law Melanie (who slyly had plans of her own for the intruder involving her deceased brother Charles's sword), Scarlett shows little remorse over what she felt she had to do to protect herself and those she was responsible for and instead seems only shocked and disgusted. Scarlett's sisters and father, outside and overhearing the shot, call out in alarm and Melanie rushes to a large window and throws it open to quickly explain away the damning noise of the gunshot. "Don't be scared, chickens!" she calls out coolly, sounding glib and in a high state of humor to calm them. "Your big sister was trying to clean the revolver and it went off and nearly scared her to death!" And now, through the magic of YouTube, you can watch the entire scene by clicking here if you have four minutes and thirty-nine seconds to spare. =) Thank you, lagirl8. SO, somehow that scene just stuck in the flotsam and jetsam of my mind over the years and when I became an impromptu father it just made sense to call the boys 'The Chickens.' I've even got Nathan doing it and now anyone casually overhearing us discuss the children might think we have a coop somewhere out back and be slightly confused. I'm sure it's something the boys will laugh at when they're older, and yeah, I know how gay all of this about the movie and all make me sound but ... well ... =) There you have it. Anyhow, now that I've introduced The Chickens to you properly, I'll continue writing about what sad little mice they are these days. (Mice, chickens ... perhaps I really do belong on a farm somewhere!)

So they're bored much of the time. It's frankly supremely challenging to keep them entertained, and it doesn't matter what recent toy or game they've just received (usually after placing it at the top of a wish-list or pestering us incessantly for it) -- not more than a paltry few hours later they'll announce they have once again become afflicted with acute boredom. During the school-year week-days, there's usually plenty of activity to occupy them much of the time so we don't hear the 'I'm bored' routine too often, but summers and weekends it becomes a regular refrain. Nathan and I are largely puzzled. Their room is filled to the brim with fantastic books, various toys, board games, art supplies, and the like (much of it rather expensive stuff). They've got RC cars, an ant farm (more on that later), a microscope and slides, bug catchers, iPods, a video camera, a rock tumbler, numerous TechDecks and ramps to finger-skate them on, and the list could go on and on and on. They've access to numerous DVDs and of course the coup de grace, the PS3 system with almost a dozen games (we've only had it a few months so our collection is a bit young; note the tongue-in-cheek here). They have expensive skate boards, razor scooters, and competition-grade in-line skates (I fought Nathan tooth-and-nail against that purchase, but he won out and so Jerrod received those for Christmas one year). We've even tried summer-long passes to the local theme-and-water-park, all to no avail. I'm sure many of you might be thinking they're spoiled rotten, and although we really fight the 'spoil' part of it, you'd be right in thinking they have more than many children in the world at their disposal. And yet, inevitably, they tire of it all and that's when I'll find them moping in their room, near-comatose, and sighing "I'm bored." But I have a theory: They're not really bored - they're just over-stimulated.

Now, I admittedly laugh at myself and realize fully the paradox of my current perspective, but such is the great irony of our culture: when we're young, the adults who rule us are idiots, but when we're older, suddenly we realize how smart they were. So, forgive me as I done my 'When I Was A Child' cap and continue. When I Was A Child, for much of the time there weren't any video gaming consoles or computers or Cable-TV or iPods or Blu-ray DVD players. There was only Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, several toys, tons of books to read, a swimming pool, a swing-set, a sand-box (that I wasn't really even allowed inside much because the neighborhood cats liked it all too well), and Outside. I'm sure I bugged my Mother with the occasional 'I'm bored;' most children do, after all, but I also remember having a very active imagination and spending hours making up games to play by myself or with my brother involving whatever I could find lying about outside or my marbles or walls to walk along or the ivy in our front yard or whatever. And when I wasn't doing that, I would explore the neighborhood on my bicycle or read books or listen to records (remember those?) or, when allowed, watch a bit of television. I had a couple of neighborhood friends I would play with from time to time, but for the most part I spent a great deal of time by myself, especially when I was younger, and I don't remember feeling unhappy with that - I wasn't an overly lonely child that way (though others might have thought me to be so). I simply liked playing by myself and got very good at providing my own entertainment whenever necessary. As I aged, I became an avid reader and would while away whole afternoons and summer vacations reading book after book, begging my Mother to take me to the library to pick out something new.

Today's kids, though, are a different breed altogether. When measured up against the latest blockbuster film like 'The Dark Knight' complete with all the explosions and effects of a madman's technicolor dream, or pitted against the latest computer or PS3 game in all its cyber-glory and hyper-realism, or even compared to things like the Disney Chanel in high definition, it's no wonder modern children have little use for books or imagination. After all, how can the images in their heads compete with the indescribable beauty of what they see on the numerous projection-screens and LCD-panels that surround them almost constantly?

And yet, this frustrates Nathan and I greatly. We firmly believe what lead to much of the technological wonders our generation has invented was imagination itself, so we're just not ready to stop trying to assist the children in developing theirs. Unfortunately, our generation's very vision seems to be bringing about the destruction of the seeds it grew from as commercialism and consumerism become larger and larger forces in the lives of America's children--movies and shows and video games become bigger, better and ever more enticing all in the name of selling the next expensive gadget or experience to our kids via our wallets. To combat this, Nathan and I do everything we can to strictly limit the amount of time The Chickens spend plugged into the box, or the computer, or the PS3, and yet even with strictly controlled exposure it still seems their imaginations are stunted somehow. We try to augment television with instruction, limiting them to selections like The Discovery Channel and The Science Channel and shows like 'Mythbusters' or 'Dirty Jobs' with only occasional forays into 'Disney Channel' land (I just hate that Miley Cyrus, don't you??). Yet our efforts to try and broaden their minds seem to flop much of the time, and more often than not the boys will beg to watch that insipid 'Life of Ryan' instead. =(

They loathe being made to go play 'outside.' I make them - I'm a firm believer in fresh air and exercise for children (and, admittedly, the blessed peace it brings the adults who remain 'inside'). But it's never easy. "We don't want to play outside," they protest. "There's nothing to do." As they've aged, I've even extended their boundaries outside beyond the walls of the large courtyard our loft and the others in our loft community share to include two blocks in almost every direction, but after a few trips around that perimeter on skateboards and skates, they come inside after being gone only a half-hour or so and the 'Boredom' song begins anew. The only way I can easily get them to spend longer amounts of time out of doors is to take them to the skate park in LoDo (lower downtown), and even that has been difficult lately as Forrest doesn't want to go unless the temperature is somewhere in the 70's (Jerrod is too young to go all by himself). By the way, the photo on the website is really old - I don't even know what that white building to the left is; it's not there anymore and I've never seen it before. Here is a video of them skating that Nathan took over the weekend. =)

They both have telephone numbers and email addresses for any number of friends they could call to try and set up social functions with or even just to pass the time, but that doesn't seem to overly tempt them either. It seems all they really want to do is play video games (Jerrod) or watch hours of television (Forrest) and sometimes I wonder if what they're craving isn't really more stimulation at all but instead a sort of refuge from having to exercise their brains - mindless entertainment. BOO to that, I say! I'm not about to give up and raise little couch potatoes like so many other American families are these days. Now, in their defense, The Chickens do play together, and fairly well, from time to time but these sessions seem far too few and the boredom zombies never seem to rest too easily. During the summers when free-time is more plentiful for them we transition from a daily-media-time schedule of an hour per day each to media days (two hours apiece) three days per week plus loosely monitored extra time on weekends. When The Chickens are suffering through a long off-media day, they might play together for awhile but then all of a sudden I'll notice they've gone quiet and this is when I'll catch them lolling about listlessly in their room like sad little mice and I'll hear the dreaded words, "I'm bored. Can't we please play games or watch television?" It drives me nuts, and I just don't know how to combat it effectively. Do you have any ideas? Post a comment. It takes a village, after all. =)

A Note About The Ant Farm: While they were visiting, my Mother and Stepfather (a.k.a. Mammy and Grumps; I guess my family really is big on nick names) bought the boys an ant farm from a hobby store in Boulder we visited together one afternoon. This new toy seems to be captivating the children's interest a bit more than some of their others; they both seem to really enjoy nature and science (in small doses, however, as I've said), and today's ant farm is far cooler than the ones I remember seeing around when I was growing up. In this photo of Forrest and The Ants, we had just received the ants via mail order after several days of waiting and I had just gingerly and quickly deposited the tube they shipped in into the securely-fastened chamber filled with blue nutrient-enriched gel. Nobody told me they were RED HARVESTER ANTS!!! Yes, the BITING STINGING KIND! YIKES!! Don't worry, I wore gloves, and the lid is VERY secure or this little window to ant world wouldn't be in our home. The ant farm even lights up! Pretty cool, eh? Thank you, Mammy & Grumps!