Games People Play

Do you ever get bored and make up little games or challenges for yourself when you're alone? I bet you do. I will come clean and admit that I do. I have varied ones that I repeat and have grown fond of in my repertoire, but I'm also delighted when a new way to entertain myself occurs to me. 

There's the no stepping on sidewalk cracks, lots of people do that (I think), the checking to make sure the letter you put in the mailbox really did go in there (don't tell me you haven't double checked, I'm not buying that) and so on.

For example, I'm stopped at a red light and I see if I can hold my breath until it turns green again. That one's easy. I also sometimes see if I can count to ten and time it so the light turns green right when 10 pops into my head. A little more challenging, since you really have no way of knowing when that might be. I often lose that game, unless of course you cheat and say "four five six seven.... TEN" the second you see it turn green.   That's kind of a hollow victory though, you know full and well you cheated. Takes the fun right out of it. And if you can't at LEAST be honest with yourself, well, that says a lot right there. I don't know what exactly, but whatever.

Sometimes I involve other people in my games, although they don't know it. If I'm alone at the mall, I'll pick out someone walking along smartly ahead of me, and the race is on: "The lady in the blue sweater passes Williams Sonoma, but Susan is catching up fast. The lady in the blue sweater stops to admire something in the window! Susan takes advantage of the opportunity and narrows the gap... and ladies and gentlemen, Susan passes the lady in the blue sweater!" Sweet!

Sometimes it's seeing how many white cars (or red, or whatever) you see on the roadway you're traveling during your trip. Kind of a self imposed "Eye Spy." You have no one else to interact with, you gotta do something. 

The beauty of this is that it's all you. Tired of counting red cars? Change it up. Quit half way through. Yes, quit! We are so seldom encouraged or allowed to do that! I'm going to form a "Quitters United" club one day, and the club motto shall be: "I don't want to", or possibly, "I don't feel like it." 

The next time someone suggests you do something you don't want to do, try this: look them right in the eye and say, "I would, but I don't feel like it." How powerful would THAT be. That would be AWESOME! 

"Would you like to join me next Sunday for The Boring Pious Ladies Guild meeting? I can swing by and pick you up at noon." "You know, I would, but I'd really rather be on a burning ship at sea. At midnight." (I stole the burning ship at sea thing from someone, Dorothy Parker probably. She's dead, she won't care.)

Singing along with the radio is always good entertainment. Have you ever been singing along and pass someone and they're singing along to the same song on the same station? Now that's fantastic! A kindred spirit right there on the highway next to you that you don't know from Adam. Life is good and the Gods are shining on you. The odds of that happening were a lot better about 20 years ago, because there were like five stations then. Now we have about a million of them, and people are all fancy with their Sirius crap and what not on top of that.

When I lived in Germany, you know how many television channels there were? One. That's right, one. Oh, there were other stations, but of course they were in German. AFN, that was my channel. It sucked for a while because when I first got there, it was all reruns I had seen from the states. Took a year to cycle through and the reruns were new to me then. 

It was kind of refreshing, now that I think about it. It eliminated a lot of chatter about "What did you watch on tv last night?" around the office water cooler. If you watched tv last night, you watched the same damn thing that I did. No shit. 

Anyway, anybody interested in joining the Quitters United Club, the meeting will be at my house..... when I feel like it.