Every military family has a dirty word. I’m not talking about one of George Carlin’s 7 Words You Can’t Say On TV. I’m saying that certain words rub certain families the wrong way. One Navy family I know is not allowed to say “stupid.” If you say the word stupid, the girls gasp like you dropped the F bomb.
In the Eckhart clan, we are not allowed to use the word “bored.” Eckharts are many things, but we are never bored. In my childhood, being bored meant that Mom would find something for you to do. Preferably something that involved Windex, Comet, or a spare lawnmower.
I learned not to ever be bored. Or at least I learned not to ever be bored out loud.
I think this is one of those keys to happiness for military spouses–which is why Zelda Fitzgerald (author, flapper, expatriate, sufferer of bipolar disorder) gets to contribute one of our military wife quotes. Zelda decided she was so bored at age 27 that she would take up the life of a ballerina. I’ve seen spouses do that.
I’ve seen spouses take up a lot of things. So much of our lives involve waiting for a certain military dude or dudette to show up that it would be easy to be bored. It would be easy to proclaim to the world that you are bored. Waiting is boring by nature.
You just have to take arms against a whole sea of boredom as if my mom was standing there with her bottle of Windex. You have to refuse to be bored. Even if you are piling in the car to drive the kids 45 minutes to a new jungle gym or making a surprise dinner for your nutty neighbor, or trying to finish Anna Karenina again before Keira Knightly’s movie comes out, there is always something to do. So do it.
About Jacey Eckhart
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We refuse to be bored too during this deployment. I have been known to drive to Cabela's just so my 2 year old can see the fish in their "aquarium". It makes her day, is free (except the gajavascript:%20postComment(0);s) and it gets us out of the house. We are seldom ever bored!