We all know the story. Yes, the one that has been happening since grade school, when school lets out, and suddenly, we turn into animals set free for summer vacation. Released from captivity, we survey our pickings. We could get a summer internship or take classes. We could drain our bank accounts for a study abroad program. We could hit the gym and finally get around to sculpting that nonexistent six-pack. You get the picture; we could do a lot of things.
Yet, many of us will find ourselves stuck at home, once again, bored out of our minds, waking up at noon daily, catching up on long forgotten trashy novels and cliché sitcoms. We will tell ourselves that we “deserve” this. After all, we’ve achieved a lot this year. We kept our cool and decided not to smack our drunken roommate. We did not vomit when our professor told us the final exam was comprehensive. We put up with the Machine — which does not exist, of course — for another year. We should give ourselves a pat on the back.
However, our boredom remains. One solution? If it’s over 110 degrees outside, we could fry an egg on the sidewalk. We’d take a black metal pan, crack an egg in it and let it cook until it’s done.
But soon the novelty of frying an egg on the sidewalk will fade. So, we may even try to learn something meaningful, such as signing up for a free Artificial Intelligence course at udacity.com — which is being offered this summer, by the way. Several lessons in, though, we realize Artificial Intelligence only sounds cool on paper, and there is, like, actual thinking involved.
In the afternoon, we ponder for thirty minutes about what we should have for a late lunch, but since we’d be ostracized by society if we were fat, we decide that it’d be best to have a glass of water and a slice of bread. We wonder, exactly, how bread is made as we pick the crumbs from our plate.
We learn that not all breads are baked, and that some can be steamed, like Mantou from China, and others fried, like Puri from India. Looking at the exotic breads reminds us of Aladdin, the Arabian street-rat peasant who steals bread in the iconic “One Jump Ahead” musical number.
We’re launched into our childhood momentarily, and chuck a Disney movie in our dysfunctional DVD player, which we haven’t used in several years because of YouTube, Netflix and Hulu. Wait. “Why don’t we just find something to watch on the Internet?” we ask ourselves.
We bust out the shiny new MacBook Pro with Retina Display we purchased to fit into society. Upon logging in, we realize we do not know how to use a Mac, and spend several hours figuring out the hot keys, no longer feeling like a noob. We make a meme about our MacBook woes and post it on Reddit, getting one million likes in a single hour. We’re launched to stardom and asked to come on the Today Show the next morning.
Our parents ask us why we’re flying out to New York, and we tell them it’s because we’re an Internet star. When Matt Lauer drills us at 8 a.m. the next morning, the audience is captivated by our stage presence, and after the show, a Broadway agent asks us to join the cast of Glee.
On the set of the show, we discover our ten-octave range, and Adele, who watches the show from her $6 million Surrey mansion in England, requests a duet with us. We win ten Grammys the following year, after our debut album spawns ten number one singles, each in a different genre.
When J.K. Rowling calls us one day telling us our hit single “Why Did Harry Have to Go?” inspired her to write an eighth Harry Potter novel, we faint. When we wake up, we realize it was all a dream. Although heartbroken, we take our stance against boredom: we dare ourselves to try something new this summer.
Tarif Haque is a columnist for The Crimson White and a sophomore majoring in computer science.
