No more sofa sitting when fresh air awaits

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

April 30, 2009

When my sisters and I were growing up, there were two things you never said to our mother. You never asked her what was for dinner after she got home from work, and you never, ever told her you were bored.

You didn’t ask her about dinner because, whatever it was, it would come with a heaping portion of lecture. You didn’t tell her you were bored because she’d find you something to do, and it almost always involved cleaning or mowing something.

Joshua, my 7-year-old, is the most bored of my four children, but he and I deal with his boredom by a means of shorthand, a kind of secret language twins, 31 years separated, might use … (read more)