Homemade Jollification

  • on October 31, 2011
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Homemade Jollification
“Mom, I’m bored!” was a common saying in my house over the summer months. My brother and I didn’t do summer sports, we weren’t in 4-H, and there are only so many times you can watch Free Willy or the Fox and the Hound. Add in the factor that when you live twenty-five miles out of town, there aren’t exactly tons of people breaking down your door to come over for play dates and you get two siblings willing to try anything for a change of pace. Now generally my mom’s answer to this statement was probably similar to what your mom told you. “Clean your room. Mow the yard. Do the dishes.” You know. The boring stuff. To which we always replied, “Mom, we want something FUN!” What we didn’t realize is that fun isn’t wrapped up in a little package sitting on your doorstep every morning. Fun is made, not delivered.
To cure our boredom, my brother Landon and I generally made up games to play. Luckily we also have a very creative Dad to help us out. We had an endless arsenal so none of our games would ever get old. If You Catch It, Pet Shop, Survivors, Explorers, Narnia, and our own version of soccer were just a few. But my all time favorite wasn’t really a game at all. It was the grass sled.

If you are looking to make a grass sled you need three basic components. 1. A riding lawn mower. 2. A length of rope. 3. A cardboard refrigerator box.

You can probably guess where I’m going with this. We would flatten the refrigerator box, tie it to the back of the

lawn mower, and my brother and I would ride it like a chariot while my dad drove around on the mower. Having the expansive yard that we did, this could occupy us for long periods of time, basically until Dad was sick of driving us around. This took a simple task of mowing the yard and turned it into the highlight of most of my summers as a kid. This is not fun bought from a toy store. This is a nice big batch of homemade jollification. Now maybe my family is easily entertained, but I like to take this same approach to life in general. By finding entertainment in the bland things, such as mowing the lawn, a simple boring day can be turned into a great one. The problem is not that life is boring. The problem is our perspective. By shifting our perspective, we can see things in a completely different light. This picture says it perfectly.

(For those of you who don’t know, the Krebs cycle occurs in plants, which makes this even funnier for this horticulture major) Instead of seeing just a sign saying not to chain your bike to the railing, the person who posted this sign decided to shift their perspective and have a little fun that day. Maybe I’m the only person who saw this and secretly laughed about it all day long, but even so, the shift in perspective turned an ordinary sign into a hilarious joke. At the risk of getting a few hater looks here, I’ll even quote Hannah Montana lyrics, just because they’re so true. “Life’s what you make it, so let’s make it rock!” See things as you wouldn’t normally see them. Take a trip back to five-year-old land when you could get hours of entertainment from a single action figure or hot wheels car. Next time you are having a day lacking a little spunk, shift your perspective, and try looking at the world in a different light. Fun is all around us, if you only know where to look!