It’s like watching paint dry. Counting ants. Playing footsie with yourself.
Boredom: there’s nothing like it.
It’s one of those things that force people into highly inappropriate confessions about the type of shampoo they use to cure their head lice or how efficient One Ply toilet paper can be in a rush when all you can afford to do is to ‘drop and go’.
Whether you are a serial car counter when passing the time or merely a little more particular about head lice shampoo than others, here are a few steps on how to conquer the grey shadow of boredom and pick up some useful journalistic tips. Even if it means forging your reputation as a pitiful weirdo with a footsie fetish.
Step 1: Be prepared to do the outlandish and ridiculous.
Life is short.
It is therefore necessary to act like a Tuscan who has just arrived in Hillbrow. A journalist does not bat an eyelid when faced with the possibility of losing a leg for a story. The prospect of wearing the stockings you sleep with for your hair to school or lectures should not be frowned upon. Embrace it. Re-live your days as an insolent school child. Stick an open condom on your boss’s windscreen wiper or throw a shoe forward in the middle of a lecture and duck like George Bush. Boredom is evil and the aim is to puncture it with its own pitchfork.
Step 2: Take a camera
You need ocular proof of the ridiculous action you are about to execute. This is so that you can earn appropriate titles from your friends such as Buns of Steel, Tough Cookie or Baksteen bowels, but to name a few. A picture is worth more than a thousand words and will have your editor singing your praises and pinning a congratulatory bow on your prosthetic leg.
Offensive manners and activities never stay hidden so it would be useless to refuse your Facebook profile a few more tagged photos of yourself.
It may be illegal in 14 different countries but who ever made history by being on their best behaviour?
Step 3: Get out
Put down whatever you are doing and leave whatever shelter you have been dwelling in. In my pursuit of dancing with the downright inappropriate, I decided to spend an hour at College House, a neighbouring boys’ residence in my university. I made a point of continuously going in and out of their gate at ten minute intervals like people would with a public toilet on an average day. Regardless of the looks that screamed, “mad journalism student on the loose”, make sure to maintain a serious and sure face. Your reputation may be reduced to the capacity of a teaspoon of sugar but remember that you are making history and conquering boredom all while making a fool of yourself for the sake of the profession of journalism.
Step 4: Reflect and document
After having stripped all notions of being a sane and socially acceptable person from your community, put all the evidence together in a document of your choice. Once again, evidence of this unusual activity is part of the entire process. You want to one day laugh until your dentures shoot out, hit your cat and make it comatose as you look at the picture, read the diary entry or blog post. Every uncomfortable or embarrassing feeling has to be put down. Though such activities may not always guarantee something positive, such as my luck on making a new acquaintance, people may live and die but recorded memories are forever.
Step 5: Pray
If you cannot be rehabilitated back into society, better to seek divine powers for acceptance and hope for the best in the afterlife. It’s all downhill from here onwards.
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