“How was that marketing presentation at work?” my wife Betsy asked.

            “Boring,” I replied.

            Four-year-old Sally, who had been drawing pictures at the kitchen table, looked up at me in astonishment. “I thought NOTHING bored grownups!” she said.

            Think about it. To our 4-year-olds, a grownup complaining of boredom would be like a dog complaining about people who drop pizza crusts on the floor. It’s what we seem to LIVE for.

            Dad gets talked into a rough-house romp and a couple of minutes later he’s worn out and gasping, ordering the kids to desist while he tries to get his boring world re-centered. “You kids don’t know when to quit!” he accuses the stirred-up monkeys.

            “Yes, we do,” says Junior. “When someone’s crying.” That’s how a kid knows enough fun has been had. Parents will try to quit before that, causing kids to begin to doubt their judgment and seek out livelier company.

            Grownups talk about things like mortgages, money and politics. (And heaven help the child who tries to interrupt one of these conversations to say something interesting!) We read books without pictures. We watch news, soap operas and baseball on TV. At the beach we lie motionless on the sand. Plus, we think clothing is an excellent gift. 

            To a kid, the tragedy of all this is that adults have the money and power to make every day an orgy of delight. It breaks a child’s heart to think of the toys that could be purchased with an adult’s paycheck! On any given Saturday, parents (if they wanted to) could take their kids to a zoo, circus or amusement park. But the sad fact is that they are more likely to spend their Saturdays trying to sleep late, doing laundry or satisfying their creditors. To most kids, their parents are like those reclusive millionaires who dress in rags and die of starvation. What a waste. 

            Worse yet, parents try to inflict their anti-fun feelings on their kids. Thus a running child is warned, “You’ll get overheated.” A joyously whooping child is told, “Calm down.” A child about to dive into a chocolate cake is told, “Take a small piece; that cake is too rich.” A kid who gets a cash gift of more than $50 is ordered, “This goes into the bank for college.”

            Although grownups never forbid children to have “too much fun” in those exact words, that is their apparent aim.

            While grownups seem to be actively pursuing it, boredom is childhood’s bane.

            I can remember it well. In fifth grade I used to pass the time in class by figuring out how old I was in days, then in hours, then minutes. On days when I was feeling less cerebral, but just as bored, I would make a list that started with the moment of list-making and continued down to the time school let out. It would look something like this:

…2:27

2:28

2:29

2:30!

            Sometimes, if I got bored early enough in the day, the list would cover several hours. Then I would watch the clock and put a check-mark by each minute, once it had been endured. It wasn’t a smart technique for making time pass. It pretty well stopped it dead.

            And, as near as I can figure it, a child’s perception of time is a major contributing factor to boredom. If a dog-year is seven human years, a child-year is about twice that. So when Dad clicks off the sustaining flow of morning cartoons, the 10-minute lag-time before Junior finds something else to do, leaves a bleak, yawning gap in his life that stretches ahead like a life sentence in solitary confinement.

            Another contributing factor is a child’s lack of obligations. Look at it this way: When a grownup knows that he should be preparing his income-tax return, painting the house and mowing the lawn, just about anything will be interesting enough to tempt him off-course.

            But just when I think I’ve figured out kids’ terrible susceptibility to boredom, I’ll find little Wendy contentedly watching “Shrek” for the 14th time. How can boredom ever overtake someone with such formidable powers of enjoyment? Or I’ll find her peeling the wrappers off her crayons, murmuring, “C’mon Blue, let Yellow try on your clothes. Are you cold? You can snuggle here next to Purple, OK?” How can a kid ever be bored when her little pack of crayons contains eight living playmates? 

            Some things defy understanding. By me, anyway.