October 21, 2012 at 9:33 pm , by Nick Shell

23 months.

If I was ever convicted of a heinous crime, I would rather be executed than to have to live out the rest of my life in prison.

Because I don’t deal with boredom well at all… unless I have an outlet.

Granted, I’m pretty confident I won’t suddenly decide to become a serial killer any time soon, so I really don’t have anything to worry about.

Hi. I’m Nick Shell and this is my positive and upbeat blog about fatherhood.

For a minute there you may have felt like you were on the wrong channel or at least that I’ve been watching too muchCSI or Shawshank Redemption.

Actually, that was my way of indirectly helping to remind us all for a minute what it was like to be bored as a kid.

To think of how my 23 month-old son has to remain strapped into a car seat for an hour each day…

How is he not bored out of his mind? I give him toys and books to occupy him, but those only help for so long.

In general, as a kid, you are dragged around by your parents, having to go wherever they take you, as you hope there will be something at least halfway interesting once you get there.

Our brains process loneliness as pain, as I learned from a National Geographic documentary on solitary confinement.

Often, loneliness and boredom go hand in hand.

So my theory is that children have to have good imaginations in order to survive childhood. It’s part of the process of growing stronger.

Tis the season for plentiful amounts of made-in-China Halloween toys.

Notice the Jack-o-lantern necklace Jack is wearing in the picture above.

He ran around the house this morning pretending it was shooting lasers, calling the sci-fi pumpkin weapon his “Orange Jake Ball.”

Evidently he forgot the word for pumpkin, but remembered that yesterday he painted pumpkins with his new friend Jake.

That’s a boy’s imagination alright.

And then there’s the rubber eyeball…

I made the mistake of letting him carry it upstairs with him during bath time. Needless to say, prying it out of his hand for bedtime was not an easy task:

“My eyeball!…”.

Jack was so excited this morning when we not only let him have some “fluffy” but also let him have his eyeball as part of the scenery.

This afternoon we walked to the community Fall Festival. Along the way, Jack found an Osage-Orange, also known as a hedge-apple.

Basically, it’s a strange brain-looking fruit that is inedible but is used in making insecticides.

Fortunately, Jack’s “yellow ball” along with his eyeball helped the two of us have a more legitimate presence in a social gathering where a good number of the people there were in Halloween costumes.

With his 2nd birthday coming up in a few weeks, I know he will be receiving some really cool Thomas & Friends die cast metal toys, because that’s what we’re getting for him.

But it’s good to know that even without real toys, Jack would manage just fine with a rubber eye ball, a pumpkin necklace, and a prehistoric fruit that looks like a brain.

Yes, kids have wonderful imaginations… because they have to!

That’s how they deal with living in a big, scary, unknown world.

Actually, that should give us adults every reason to keep our childlike imaginations.

I say that because I know, at least for me, the world I live in isn’t small, safe, or fully understandable.