When my brother, Mark and I were kids, we spent our summers in a cottage on a lake; a cottage my parents had actually built themselves from a pile of pre-fab components that fit together (mostly). It was a large A-frame construction, with a huge front porch and was perched on a forested hill overlooking our very own stretch of lakefront. Halfway down the path leading to the water was a stone fireplace where we cooked hotdogs and marshmallows and a picnic table where we devoured our efforts.
We had a wooden dock that had to be slid into the water every spring and pieced together in order to moor our rowboat and sailboat. The canoe was flipped over on the shore nearby, its paddles tucked securely underneath, and anchored a short distance out in the water was a raft my father and grandfather built the first summer we lived there. My parents built the cottage the summer I was five and although we took many vacations and sightseeing trips other places in the years that followed, I pretty much spent every June, July, and August at the lake until I went away to college 12 years later.
You would think that this would be the most idyllic way to spend one's childhood, and for the most part, Mark and I would agree. Every day we would wake up to some new adventure that generally involved hiking through the woods, sailing, canoeing, fishing, and long afternoons of swimming and lazing around in the sun. But there were also days when it rained, or, in the pre-global warming era, times when there was a distinct chill in the air (since we were, after all, in the foothills of the Adirondacks). Not only that, but when we were teenagers and the need for social contact reached beyond the limits of our sibling companionship and childhood amusements, we'd often spend many restless hours trying to figure out what to do with ourselves all day.
I should point out that this was not only a computer-less/cell phone-less era, but also our cottage had neither a TV nor a phone that wasn't a party line, and was out of range of most popular radio stations. It was for this reason (or perhaps the sanity of my mother) that my father first devised the "What To Do When There’s Nothing To Do" list.
Although I don't remember precisely how the idea came about, I'm guessing it originated one especially rainy Saturday when both my parents were attempting to patiently endure the restlessness of their offspring. I do recall, though, that after several hours of listening to the dramatic sighs and unrestrained whines of two preteens, my father handed us each a sheet of paper with the heading "What To Do When There's Nothing To Do" printed across the top in red ink. Although I don't recall whether we ever consulted our completed lists for the remainder of the summer, at least it gave us something to do that afternoon (and, no doubt, gave my parents some peace and quiet).
I've thought about that list quite a lot over the last few months, when the triple whammy of a pandemic, my recent retirement, and the no-one-reads-what-I-write-anyway-so-why-should-I write-it syndrome struck simultaneously. I even went as far as digging through a box of childhood mementos to see if I could unearth that old list (which, I should add, did give me something to do for an hour or so).
Failing this, I made an effort to recreate the list, with somewhat mixed results, considering the number of years that have passed in the interim, and the current irrelevance (or perhaps impossibility) of the activities that might have been on that list.
Here, for example, are some of the original entries that came back to me: add to my paper dolls' wardrobe choices by cutting more outfits from the Montgomery Ward catalogue; practice blowing bubblegum bubbles until I’m as good as Mark; try to win 10 games of Solitaire in a row for the new family record; work on my goal of reading all the Louisa May Alcott books; practice doing the jitterbug for when my friends and I watch American Bandstand together in the fall; learn to play more Beatles songs on my guitar; and practice Hula Hooping on the front porch (or in the house if Mom says it’s okay). Then suddenly I remembered my final entry on the “What To Do When There’s Nothing To Do” list: Write a story.
Huh! Write a story? Now there’s a thought.
