Luxurious, guiltless boredom. Tuesday afternoons when the convenience stores got comics in. Missing school because you had a cold. A cold is nothing now but an annoyance.

Sleepovers. Boys in pajamas eating junk food and staying up late talking about what we thought we knew about girls. Tag. Making up stories and telling them as if they were true. I remember a few doozies.

Jumping out of tree forts. Swinging on ropes in the barn. In the park in the summer smelling the sun-heated metal of the slide, of the merry-go-round, and the chlorine mix of the pool, imagining all the places in the big wide world when the world, because it was unexplored, was bigger and wider.

Running. All of a sudden. And for no reason in particular.

Counting down the days to Christmas. Bike races. Collecting Star Wars toys. Portable PacMan arcade games. Playing at Six Million Dollar Man in the backyard. Waiting all spring for summer and freedom. Waiting all summer for the new Saturday morning cartoon lineup.

Pretending, imagining, hoping.

I don’t know the luxury of boredom anymore. Boredom is always attended by guilt. And I never run all of a sudden and for no reason in particular anymore. Maybe tomorrow I will do it.

SS