When it comes to boredom, it has made me do some pretty crazy things, things that people won’t really understand. But thankfully, I’ve never done anything regrettable or even messed up. I’ve never been that bored. I’ve been bored enough to read a textbook as if it were a novel, even got bored one time that I was reading a pry school English textbook. This was shortly after my secondary school education. However, most of the time, when I get bored, if the weather is nice, I simply take walks or watch movies.
Usually, my bored phases just need me and my thoughts, I don’t usually want to be with people. If I’m with people, I’d get bored with their presence and get tired. And whatever is going on, I might not take part. Which is why I enjoy taking walks. If not, I’d simply read a book or see a movie. But even that can get boring as well. So, I take a nap.
The truth is, people have done some really messed-up things in the name of being bored. They’ve hooked up with people who turned their lives upside down, made some pretty damning life decisions, all because they were bored. I know someone that, once he gets bored, starts craving to smoke weed or drink alcohol. Funny thing is, he never does this alone. He needs to do it with friends who also want to drink and smoke.
And if you know anything, you know that gatherings where there is smoking and drinking are never a good thing because they will always be a magnet for trouble. This guy has been in fights, jails, court/police cases… all because when he gets bored, he can’t control himself. He just has to catch some zsss with the boys. And it almost always gets him in trouble.
I think for me, one of the craziest things I did while being bored was back when I was in school. Just after I moved into my lodge. I had been there for a few months and was still waiting for classes to resume. I didn’t have a lot of work to do that day, so I was at home, doing basically nothing. But it was a hot afternoon, so I couldn’t go out. I couldn’t stay in either because I was just sweating profusely. You know the kind of sweat that messes up whatever you’re wearing, and soaks up the sheets? The kind that even after you take your bath, you can still feel it coming back?
Yeah, that’s the kind of hot afternoon I was dealing with. I was bored out of my mind, and I couldn’t stay home or take a walk. So, I decided to find out more about my lodge. Prior to that, I had only been conversant with my floor, I didn’t know anyone else because I was still new, so I didn’t have reasons to visit the other floors. But that day, I just decided to walk around the lodge. So I, bare-chested with my shirt swung over my shoulder as I walked slowly through the passage.
Due to the heat, a number of doors were open, but that didn’t bother me. I wasn’t going to visit anyone. Just walk around. After all, I was also a tenant there. But then, someone didn’t recognize me. And according to her, I was ‘loitering’. Hah… loitering in my own lodge? It didn’t really get out of hand, sha, because it was easy to prove my tenancy. Although it also showed that she was observant and security-conscious because I also passed many people who didn’t know me, but they ignored me. If I didn’t live there, that altercation would have ended differently.
But then, as luck would have it, that trip I took that day ended up saving my life. I learned about the presence of a balcony and the burglar-proof bars there. The balcony is too close to the fence, so criminals can easily climb the fence and then make their way into the lodge, so the bars are always locked at night. If I had not taken that trip that day, I wouldn’t have known.
During Christmas that year, all my lodgemates travelled for the holidays, and I was the only one in the lodge. I remembered to lock up those burglary-proof bars before going to bed, just as I also locked all the doors and the gate. The next morning, I woke up to hear that there had been a robbery in my street, they even got into my compound somehow, but I slept through the whole damn thing because they couldn’t make it in.
So, this particular case of boredom didn’t get me to do anything I regretted, but I did learn something that turned out to be valuable. Because if I had not taken that trip that day, I would not have known of the bars and their uses. Later on, over the years, as I made friends on the other floors, I would have found out. But by then, it would have been too late.
