By Akshay Rao
1) Eat a handful of almonds. This great brain food will drive your curiosity about the world and pull you away from staring at a wall and drooling.
2) Start a sudoku puzzle. Complete if your lethargy persists. Sudokus activate your brain and keep you young. Studies show that a sudoku a day keeps dementia at bay (reference needed). Sudokus are the main reason that former American president Donald Trump is so sharp in his late 70s. Side effects include megalomania.
3) Befriend a surgeon. What better way to rinse out the boredom from your brain than to have it cut open and cleansed? Think of it like an oil change for your brain fluid. Do not exceed 1 brain fluid change per lifetime. Side effects include memory loss, infection, death, or accidental lobotomy. Please consult your wife before you do this….That was my…ummm, what’s the word for it…mistook?
4) Talk to kids: grandkids, friends’ kids, Jason Kidd, baby goats. All types are encouraged but avoid any type near a playground or school. Kids are dangerous in groups but also full of wonder. You may be asked these questions:
-“What if lamps and jellyfish switched places?”
-“Is it possible to score 100 points in today’s NBA?”
– “Bleeehhhhh?”
5) Close your eyes and count to 1 million. Start at 17,347 and increment by multiples of 1.
6) Sample a bag of original Doritos. Not the chips, just the bag. Ask yourself, “Does this taste like chicken?” Start drafting your Dragon’s Den business proposal about selling empty Doritos bags. Make sure you ask for an exorbitant quantity of money to fund your company.
7) Say the word “ridiculous” in every accent that you know, and some that you don’t.
8) Stand next to your sleeping wife at 3am and whisper, “Your salmon was terrible! You should learn to cook better like your mum.” Repeat with low volume every night for 90 days. Then, on the 91st day, ask her during breakfast – when she is awake – “Are we eating salmon tonight?” She will gaze up to the left quizzically and say, “You know what babe…I gotta ask my mum for her recipe…let’s do pasta tonight.” Nod agreeably, maintain your poker face, and bask in the endorphins.
9) Write a list of things to do when you’re bored. It should be a catch-all topic that covers a mix of stupid ideas and reasonable tasks with a hint of bitterness directed at a loved one.
10) Eat an Everything bagel with cream cheese and STORE-BOUGHT salmon.
11) Replace the word “caliper” with “calamari” at work. After you calibrate a metal cube to one-thousandth of an inch for the 37th time in the month, tell your boss, “Yessir, I finished all the calibrations. But, we gotta get new calimaris. I was fishing for a good one in the drawer but all I could find were these old water-colored ones. We need new calimaris!”
12) Did Marcus Aurelius ever get bored? I would love to read his thoughts on boredom. I would have called that book, “Meditations…are for people who like to be bored”.
13) Sit down, close your eyes, and pray for it to end.
14) Go to the master bathroom, and ask your reflection loudly, “Who are you really?” Put both hands on the sink counter, look down, sigh, and whisper to yourself as you look up, “How did I get here?”
15) Return to bed. As you fall asleep, recall the last few months of your life. You were filled with joy when you were newly married just 4 months ago. But now, you are not happy at all. You miss hanging out with the boys. It was so much fun eating almonds and playing that zombie-killing multiplayer game called, Killing Floor. I can’t believe she made me give up video games!
16) Wake up the next morning on your birthday to find a surprise gift from your wife: a new Doritos-themed gaming PC. Maybe Sarah is not so bad after all…
17) Do not, under any circumstances, let her find this list.
This list was originally submitted as an assignment in May 2024 for the Jest for Laughs creative writing course at Western University.
Akshay Rao 