What To Do Now

It's the weekend and I'm already bored. Why am I bored? I have two days in which I can do pretty much whatever I want, so surely I should be able to fill my life with joy, pleasure, or at least some low-grade sin. It occurred to me a while back that if I eliminated working, eating stuff and working out from my life there would be bugger all left. So now that I have my first weekend in ages with no work and no business travel I'm wondering just what the fuck I should do with it.

I tried looking around at other suburban types for inspiration. Their weekends seem to divide cleanly into two classes of activity: working on their home and shopping. There is also all that time they spend taking Junior to baseball/soccer/softball practice, or going to church, but since the main attraction of either appears to be the opportunity to converse with other similarly dull people about their latest home improvement project or purchase, I fail to see the opportunity for excitement. I asked Mrs Bison what people do and she pointed out that they have hobbies. Such as "crafts". So I suppose I could spend my weekend making a papier mache painted head. Or I could hold my head underwater for, say, half an hour and just get it over with.

This is probably why people like me die as soon as they quit working - we have no idea what to do with all the free time. Faced with a lifetime of home improvement projects, shopping and crafts we simply lose the will to live. Work has expanded to fill most of our lives and the few open times become moments of sudden panic as we struggle to remember what we did before all this work. What would I have done as a kid? Well, when I was small I would have gone up the hill with a friend and made a den in the woods, which is great and all that, but it doesn't provide much of a pointer about what to do in suburban St.Louis. There's no hills, you see. When I was older I would have sat with friends, listened to heavy metal music and maybe drunk some illicit beer, while we talked about what life was going to be like when we had money and cars and our own houses.

Then you grow up and find that your house isn't quite the leather-lined party palace you imagined at the age of sixteen. Instead it's a monument to suburban insecurity, where everyone runs around upgrading their counter tops to granite and their lighting/shower/bedroom set/furniture/entertainment system/basement in the desperate attempt to fit in with the people at church or bunco, who are all doing the same, in order to stave off the sudden realization that there is nothing in their life but home improvement and shopping. And, worst of all, shopping for home improvement stuff. I know exactly where I'll find people like me today (or people that I'm supposed to be like); they're down on Manchester Road, shopping. Someone will have woken up and said "You know what we need? Some new track lighting in the family room. Let's go to Home Depot." And that's the weekend right there: buying and installing track lighting.

If that's what the weekend is supposed to offer then no wonder I'm bored. Fuck track lighting. And fuck granite counter tops too. If I'd thought at the age of sixteen that this would be my future then I probably wouldn't have made it past eighteen. What happened to fun? Well, fun requires friends. It's not that you can't have pleasure on your own (we know a song about that, don't we?) but the best times are always had with your mates, and I haven't done a great job of cultivating mates over recent years, with all the moving around, and working and that. Most of the people I know will be doing the track lighting thing, poor bastards.

First things first - I'm going to the gym. And while I'm there I'm determined to figure out what to do for the rest of the day that doesn't involve eating, shopping or healthy but poinless walks in the country. Perhaps this is why that bloke ended up shoving the potato up his arse - he was just that bored. Or it was the only way to avoid a trip to Home Depot. "Sorry darling - I'd love to go and pick out new carpeting for the dining room, only I've got to go and get this potato and jar of jelly removed from my anus this afternoon. Maybe we can go another time?" Fortunately Mrs Bison isn't a "drag you to the shops" wife, which is great news because I just looked in the cupboard and there's no potatoes, only a fucking enormous onion. Now that really would make your eyes water...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison