BOREDOM
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.
—II Tim. 4:3
551 Longest Continuous Yawn
The longest continuous yawning reported is by a 15-year-old female patient in 1888 who yawned continuously for 5 weeks.
552 25% Alive—Other Times Bored
A recent survey found that the average adult spends about one-third of his waking time bored!
Famed economist Stuart Chase once sat down to figure the calendar of his days. There is, he said, an ascending scale of human values and somewhere on it there is a line between living and mere existing. In how many hours of the week, he asked himself, had he truly and intensively lived? In how many had he just existed? Out of the 168 hours of the week he found that he had been “alive” only 40, or about 25% of the total time!
—Woman’s Day
553 The Doldrums
Nothing was so feared by seamen in the days when ocean vessels were driven by wind and sail as the doldrums. The doldrums is a part of the ocean near the equator, abounding calms, squalls, and light, baffling winds. There the weather is hot and extremely dispiriting. The old sailing vessels, when caught in doldrums, would lie helpless for days and weeks, waiting for the wind to begin to blow.
554 Bored To Murder
Diana Humphries of Houston, Texas, was only a sixteen-year-old pretty blonde, but the routine of everyday living left her tired, wearied, and bored. To “escape the boredom” she ambushed and killed her fourteen-year-old brother Robert with a . 22 rifle. And the reason? “Because nothing exciting ever happens around here,” she sobbed. She planned also to kill her father, mother, and herself—all to end the “always-tired” routine of the family life.
555 Lighthouse Keepers Bored
After 46 years of service as lighthouse keepers in New England, Joseph and Charlotte Hindley have retired. Their observation after all those years: It was all pretty boring. About the biggest problem was learning to live with the foghorn. “You just talked between the blasts,” Mrs. Hindley said.
—The Calgary Herald
556 Fireman’s Holiday
In the firehouses of Norman Rockwell’s bucolic America, fireman passed the hours between alarms playing checkers and showing off the polished brass and bright-red trucks to wide-eyed young visitors. But for the volunteer firemen of Genoa, Texas, in suburban Houston, that was not enough.
In the past three years, eight bored Genoa firemen have set about 40 fires in abandoned buildings and grass fields. As soon as the blazes were going, the arsonists would dash back to the firehouse and rush off to put out their own fires.
The Genoa firemen were quite busy until they made the mistake of setting fire to a barn owned by the brother of a Houston fire department official. An investigation of the blaze led to the Genoa firehouse, and the overeager fire fighters were exposed. Explained one of the firemen charged with arson: “We’d hang around the station on the night shift without a thing to do. We just wanted to get the red light flashing and the bells clanging.
—Time
557 Doubling Away Boredom
During the late 19th century, the small towns of America had grown tired of seeing Uncle Tom’s Cabin dramatized for over 40 years. To revive interest and instead of adopting a new play, the various Tom Companies just doubled the cast, having two Uncle Toms, two Little Evas, two Simon Legrees, and two sets of bloodhounds.
558 Joy Of Acquisition
The noted Count Henri-Francois-Noel of Paris owned a good- sized collection of rare books and loved that collection so much that he got bored with them. To stir up some excitement, he sold his entire library five times at five-year intervals (1837–1861) at auction.
He made certain he attended each auction and succeeded in outbidding all others. Thus—because of boredom—he sold and repurchased his entire library 5 times. The auctioneer’s fee was 20% each time, and he ended up actually rebuying his own library after five auctions.
559 Fed Up 68
Switchboard operators at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington were harassed one day by a flood of calls on one of a block of 20 telephone lines into the office. The word had spread that if you dialed FED UP 68 you would be connected to the Democrats. More conventionally, the number was 333–8768.
—Anthony Paul
560 How To Sleep During Speeches
Lancet, British medical journal, gives this advice on how to sleep during speeches at public dinners:
“The head should rest on a tripod formed of the trunk and of the arms firmly placed on the table. The head should be placed in the hands in a slightly flexed position to allow the tongue to fall forward and prevent stertorous breathing. The fingers should be outstretched over the face and eyes, pressing the skin of the forehead upwards to wrinkle it. This gives an appearance of deep concentration.”
—Maxwell Droke
561 Questionnaire: What Are You Doing?
Harried alumni often wonder if their class agents have nothing better to do than pester them with questionnaires. Two notables have struck back. The Associated Press reported that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (Harvard ’48) ignored a class questionnaire which asked, among other things, “How do you like your boss?” And Mr. Lincoln Schuster (Columbia ’17), the Public Relations Journal noted, had his own answer for the time-worn query, “What are you doing now?” Replied the book publisher, “I’m filling out a questionnaire.”
—Saturday Review
562 Charging People For Using My Time
Sydney J. Harris said that he has suppressed a long-felt desire to mail out a rate card giving his basic fee along with certain “extras.” A few suggested charges are listed below:
“For having to listen to a committee report, $5.
“For having to listen to a treasurer’s report, $10.
“For spending an hour before the talk with the program chairman, hearing all about her parakeet, $25.
“For being driven out to view local monument, $15.
“For having to sit through slides of somebody’s trip to Hawaii before my talk, $50.
“For having to partake of a hotel banquet meal, $10, plus all of the bicarbonate of soda I can consume.”
—Chicago Daily News
563 Diocletian’s Cabbages At Salonica
Diocletian had advanced quickly from governorship of Maesia to consulship to command of the palace guards, and to emperorship of the Roman Empire in 285 BC. He then efficiently organized the empire, designating a successor in the West as second-in-command. Furthermore, a third and fourth succeeding positions were created whose occupants would also be sure of eventual promotion to the Imperial Office after a definite term.
But after 20 years of service, Emperor Diocletian became tired of the pressures around him and in the 21st year of his reign, he abdicated the empire. Maximian begged him to remain, but he rejected the temptation with a smile of pity, observing that if Maximian should see the cabbages which he had planted with his own hands at Salona, he would rather be urged to relinquish the pursuit of power.
564 Epigram On Boredom
• If you can’t stand solitude, perhaps you bore others too!
• A student’s apt comment about one of his professor’s lectures: “It took Sir William Ramsay sixteen years to discover helium; the Curies thirty years to find radium; yet in just 20 minutes, he produces tedium.”