By

Jimmy Joe Meeker

Children bore very easily. They don't have a large library of experience to think back on and they don't have any sexual fantasies to enjoy. As opposed to adults, they only have hundreds (rather than millions) of fears and anxieties to occupy their minds and keep them from being bored. Worst of all, their lives are controlled by people who actually think it's worthwhile to mow the lawn on Saturday afternoon.

These are some of the basic tools a child should carry with him at all times in the very likely event that his mother will suddenly grab him up and drag him off to look at wallpaper all day.

Small Plastic Soldiers: Can be used in any of a thousand games from "Battle of the Beauty Parlor" to "Sheets and Pillow Cases Sale Display Spy."

String: A twelve-inch piece of string can be knotted, unknotted (sometimes), wrapped around fingers until they turn blue, wrapped around other stuff, and tied to items (such as small plastic soldiers) that can be dangled down drains and out windows. Strain can also be shoved up the nose or swallowed.

Gum: For chewing, stretching, blowing bubbles, cracking, use as an adhesive to stick stuff in obscure places, as ammunition, and for placement on chairs and floors for extra giggles long after the flavor is gone.

Small house with no toys, funny smells, a small TV showing soap operas all day with the sound turned off, and awful-tasting hard candy that you aren't allowed to eat anyway. Only reading material is Reader's Digest. Only pet is elderly, mean dachshund or the world's fattest cat, which bites.

1. Gain entry to bedroom and examine top drawer. Seek evidence of male companions from early years. Look for signs of lover killed in W.W.II. Not any other photos, postcards, or letters that are none of your business. If something looks good, steal it.

2. Examine third drawer. Will contain undergarments that are remarkable for size and complexity of construction.

3. Beg parents to let you go out in the hallway where you can look under doors at peoples' feet. Slide down banisters.

Day-long search for shoes, hats, pants, dresses, fabric, buttons, and other completely useless items. Must remain quiet beyond reasonable period of time. No bathrooms. Movement severely limited. Mother in condition resembling drug addiction; cannot be persuaded to go home.

1. Try to see as many naked fat women as you can in the dressing rooms. Use excuse of looking for mother.

2. Unscrew mannequin's heads.

3. Locate garments that have large plastic tags on them. Locate wooden or plastic pillars on either side of door of the shop. Toss the garment out the door between the pillars and set off shoplifter alarm.

4. Complain to your mother (or anyone within earshot) of hunger, thirst, sore feet, earache, sore throat, diarrhea, fever, blood in urine, etc.

5. Unpeel MasterCard and Visa stickers off the window.

6. While women are out of the dressing rooms, switch their clothing.

One hour or more of intense boredom. Worse than school, bedtime, or fishing with your grandfather. Enormous potential for punishment from parents and, possibly, God.

1. Try to make your Dad laugh.

2. Push fingers in and out of ears to distort preacher's words.

3. Pinch brother or sister until they scream.

4. Try to throw up just by thinking about it.

5. Stand up and call the woman behind you, "Devil lady".

With age comes vast control of situations. If a man gets bored, he can simply light up a smoke, get drunk, or go to a movie. He can eat candy, fool around with young girls, buy porno books, even stay up all night and watch TV. His only restrictions are his income and his wife/girlfriend. In pursuit of income and happiness, however, a man cannot always avoid business conferences, PTO meetings, or intimate dinners with the fool brother-in-law.

Paper Clip: Good, all-purpose probe; emergency ear, tooth, and fingernail groomer. Fun to bend into interesting shapes. Can also be hooked to pull stuffing out of chairs.

Moustache: Great to stroke, fun to pluck. The hairs can be rolled in the fingertips, curled, bent, and examined endlessly.

Pen: Clicking the top, disassembling, reassembling, tapping, poking, and sucking are all possible with a pen.

Cigarettes: The ultimate boredom weapon. Each new smoke is like a new day. Blow smoke rings, blow out of nose, pat tobacco, flick ashes.

Boring, dry speeches. Heard it all before. Keeping a serious demeanor is important to your survival. Can last all day.

1. Squeeze your hand and observe the bulging veins and blue color.

2. Sing "L.A. Woman" to yourself as loud as you can.

3. Recall every sexual experience of your life and categorize them.

4. Count things. Number of bald guys, number of "uh's" speaker uses.

5. Clean everything on your body you can without arousing suspicion.

Six to eight months of unbearable home life with little chance for sex, and then of very low grade. Must stay near home. Intense guilt feelings accompany acts of perversity or immorality. Wife dominates TV, film choice, menu, and everything else. Must stay sober in case of emergency.

1. High speed station wagon rides (within two miles of home).

2. Develop large, impressive, but secret collection of filthy books and tapes.

3. Clean out everything that you can clean out.

4. Watch Rosemary's Baby or The Omen.

Average ten to twenty minute wait. Naked, worried, nothing to read, cold, no decorations, nowhere comfortable to sit.

1. Do a nude interpretive dance. Slip on shoes, do a tap dance.

2. Lay down on the table and put your feet up in the gynecology stirrups.

3. Unroll the disposable paper table covering and write a dirty message for the nurse who cleans up the exam room. Roll it back up.

4. Plug earpieces of stethoscope with toilet paper.

5. Smear KY jelly on all the doorknobs.

Although women are a major source of the world's boredom (insisting as they do, on a regular annual income and attendance at church, school, and dinner), they themselves are seldom bored. They seem perfectly content in situations that would reduce a male or a child to tears. A woman can spend eight hours at the beauty parlor and two additional hours fooling with her makeup, talk on the phone about nothing for six hours, follow four soap operas, shop all afternoon for something no one wants, and then complain of having "too much to do." However, there are two situations that bore even women.

Hot, sweaty, repetitious, tiring, dumb.

1. Think about sex.

Hot, sweaty, repetitious, tiring, dumb.

1. Think about ironing.

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