@Ken Anderson sounds as tho you had a reasonably enjoyable and care free, not overly supervised childhood. As I spent the majority of my childhood at a strict boarding school I pretty much had the opposite to you.. except on school hols of course. At school everything we kids did was rigidly supervised and organised by our Mason masters. We had so little free time to oneself as every step you took was under the beady eye of a supervisor. Was more like being in a military school I suppose.. ridiculously regimental and autocratic. If you wanted some free time more often than not it was curtailed by an order to polish the floor boards or shine your shoes or belt buckle. There was no sense of freedom of movement as you had to march everywhere with some prefect or other barking orders like a staff sargeant in the Army. We marched to the dining room, to the gym, to the picture hall even to the showers. The longest march was every Sunday.. regardless of the weather.. to church which was not on school grounds but a nearby suburb.
@Craig Swanson, that doesn't sound like a lot of fun. I thought a couple of my cousins had it bad because they had to do a lot more work around their dad's farms than I did.
I'd have give my left one to grow up on a farm rather than be sent to boarding school.. Lucky you. Once on holidays I was far from bored. I was rarely home..making up for lost time. I was either sneaking into the picture theatre, playing in a tree house, catching small fish or yabbies, swinging from a tree into a swimming hole, speeding down a sand hill on a piece of board, hiking the nearby forest, pinching fruit from the local orchardist, climbing trees to catch cicadas or Christmas beetles or racing around our dirt streets in my home made billy cart. Never bored..never.
I am taking that over hours on end on hands and knees polishing a wooden floor until the supervisor can see their reflection in it to their satisfaction. We had our own crap to deal with too..literally.. like being put on toilet duty which meant cleaning every bowl spotless in our section..about 30 toilets. If we wanted a game of footy or cricket first we had to clear the fresh cow patties from the field. Yes we had cows grazing on our so called sporting fields. Btw Ken I also had to clean chicken coops at home.
My mom had five boys and no daughters, yet she did all of the cleaning and almost all of the cooking. Dad would do breakfast on Saturdays, and once in a while we might offer to help her in clearing the table or doing dishes but, to be honest, I didn't think of doing that often and, when I did, there was generally something that I was going to ask her for later. We did have to clean our own rooms, but mom came in behind us and did the mopping or anything that we might have missed.
Working on a small farm of hogs and chickens, not very much time to get bored. But, there were times, during the summer heat of northeastern Indiana, that I would lay down in the wheel barrel in the barn, and take a short nap. Step-dad was at his full-time lumber yard job and step-mom was always doing something in the house and never thought to check up on me. Now, the one time I'd really get bored and would go to my room and do something...…….when Lawrence Welk Show was on. My step-parents really, really liked watching that show and for me...…..well, you know (boring).
Absolutely! I could get as bored as I wished! I often got bored with doing chores, working in the cabinet shop, mowing the lawn, doing homework and a whole spectrum of things. As long as whatever I was bored with was done correctly, Dad didn’t care what my mood was unless of course I got a tad too testy and then he’d reach for the belt which cured any sense of boredom I might have felt.