by Carol Rzadkiewicz

Created on: March 03, 2009

A few weeks ago, during a particularly violent thunderstorm, my neighborhood experienced a power outage that lasted several hours. Of course, I don't mind power outages (except when one continues for a week or more, as was the case after Hurricane Lili) mainly because they provide a good opportunity for me to curl up on the sofa in the den and, by battery-powered light, read a novel and not be distracted by any of the approximately six zillion movies my hubby records and/or purchases in a month's time.

Anyway, the following afternoon, I was talking with a neighbor who was complaining that her kids had driven her "totally crazy" with their endless whining during the outage. Why were they whining? Well, it was because they were bored. After all, their computer and video games, wide-screened televisions, and other assorted technological gadgetry are all dependent upon electrical current in order to function.

Yet, as I stood there under the sweltering spring-time Louisiana sun listening to my neighbor go on and on about her kids, I tried to recall a time when my siblings and I had whined to our parents about being bored; and the odd thing was, try as I might, I could not recall a single instance.

But, I wondered, why was this the case? Well, it's really quite simple, I immediately concluded. We were just too darn busy to be bored.

My family was poor. Not that my brother, my sister, and I, being children and, therefore, nave to the ways of the world, ever thought of ourselves as poor, at least not until we started school, made friends, and visited those friends' homes, after which we came to realize that perhaps our family wasn't as "affluent" as some other families in the immediate vicinity. Still, being poor did not stop us from being happy. Nor did it stop us from having fun. In fact, perhaps our poverty contributed to our fun in many ways since, unlike so many kids today, we had to rely upon creativity and imagination for our entertainment.

For example, we once built an entire Indian village in "The Little Woods," which was what we called the stand of loblolly pines and dogwoods beyond the garden to the left of the house, and which should not confused with "The Woods," those hundreds of acres of dense forest that stretched out around where we lived and wherein dwelled black bears, bobcats, and, if my Cousin Tommy was telling the truth, assorted gnomes, trolls, and werewolves, as well as some hairy, vile-smelling manlike creature with really big feet.

Anyway, in

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