Bored

A few weeks ago, Thing 2 texted me from school to beg me to come and get her, as the lesson she was attending was, "so boring I want to kill myself". It turns out the teacher, in attempt to corral some waning Grade 7 interest, was trying to tie in the history lesson with the Vancouver Olympics, which were taking place at the time. Her misguided but well intentioned lesson? The history of Curling. (The sport, not the styling.)
Okay, now I get what Thing 2's deal was....present day curling is a yawn-fest, but the history of curling? would put me to sleep.
For the record, I did not come and get her from school, and since she had no access to sharp objects, C02 or prescription drugs, she was unable to carry out Plan B. She just had to put up and shut up, as all of us have had to do at one time or another.

I got to thinking about boring things that I have had to endure, and really, the list wasn't all that long. Probably because I bring a book with me everywhere and I rarely have time to be bored. When I can recall being bored, it has to do with being trapped somewhere and not being able to change my circumstances:

• I was at a wedding once, where the speeches were interminable, but worse than that, the groom's side gave every one of their speeches in French. For about 45 minutes. The bride's family and friends did not speak French. You can imagine how much that did to endear the both families to each other.
• I took a class in Canadian Foreign Policy when I went to university. My GOD that was boring. It didn't help that the professor had the personality of a stop sign, but also, Canadian foreign policy consists mostly of "and then in 1978 a committee was formed to discuss the possibility of arranging a meeting where there might be a vote on the idea of at some point maybe having a discussion about sub-section 56-D of the legislation in progress concerning the matter of tariffs with Central America." That was delivered in the most monotonous of monotones, and for a whole semester, too.
• I've been on a few dates or attended a few parties where I wished I had brought my book. Especially one party, where singing show tunes was the main entertainment, and it was so loud you couldn't talk to anyone else. Also, there was no booze allowed, because the hosts did not allow drinking in their home.
• Because the Mister and I own our own business, people who are looking for recruits into their own "multi-level marketing" business think we would be IDEAL candidates.....we talk to people all day! we could sell the products in the salon! it's a win-win situation!! (Except, we are not interested as we already own our own business and don't need another one.) As a result, I have found myself sitting through more than one attempt to seduce me into taking part, mostly because I was too stupid to figure out what it was before attending, or too polite to get up and leave when I did figure it out. I usually want to chew off my own arm and beat myself to death with it, just to put an end to it.
• Occasionally at the salon, we have to have "product knowledge" seminars. This is usually when we bring in a new product line and have to learn what does what and so on. The rep from the company comes, invariably reads the information off the label and asks if we have any questions...."this shampoo is for colour-treated hair, so, yeah, you would use this on hair that has been coloured." It will destroy your soul. I'm not sure why we have to have someone come in and read a label to me; I can read them perfectly well myself, but that seems to be the way it's done.
• I had a client for a while that I dreaded to see his name in the appointment book. He really was the most boring person God ever made, I swear. Thank God I could cut his hair fast, because for the half hour I had to deal with him, he talked non-stop about: what he ate today, what he's allergic to, what he dreamt last night and his past medical history. And guess what he did for a living? He sold duct work. Which he could also talk about for a half an hour. (Looking back, the poor man probably had some sort of syndrome that made him unfit for human company, but he was still mind-numbingly boring.)

Honorable mention goes to an event that I did not attend, but my father did. As a James Joyce scholar, my father attended a continuous reading of the book "Ulysses" for some sort of anniversary of the author, or some such nerdy reason. The reading started at, I think, 2 p.m. and continued, with various people reading, until the book was finished, about 20 hours later, or some such thing. When told of the event, I was dutifully impressed, under the impression that it was an experiment to see if it was possible for people to actually DIE of boredom. My dad lived through it, and if it's possible, seemed to actually enjoy it, so I guess not, but I'm not convinced.

Given all that, I figured Thing 2 could handle a less-than-interesting history lesson. At least it wasn't in French.