'There are a 104 days of summer vacation and school comes along just to end it, so the annual problem for our generation is finding a good way to spend it!" - Phineas And Ferb, Title Track.
So, to continue on from where that delightfully pleasant song left off, what does our generation do in the measly 45 days of summer break our schools so generously give us? Surprisingly, observations here are practically invaluable to get to an answer: we sleep at home and flip through vague channels on the TV; we sleep at our relative's homes simultaneously re-watching old movies; We go out to malls and comfortably sleep in movie halls; we attend extra classes and never fail to sleep secretly in them as well; we leave the country and naturally sleep extensively there as well; we return home and call our friends over and finally sleep happily all over again in multiple sleepovers. In short, a thoroughly entertaining and satisfying month and a half.
Of course, to stray from the perfunctory path of this form of annual summer existence is an extremely hazardous notion on its own and yet despite that, I have decided to, wait for it, utilise some mental faculty in probing the general path our minds all follow in this season. Don't worry, set your loosely hanging jaws back into place, it shouldn't be too mind-numbingly difficult. I hope. So, without further ado, let's begin, shall we?
It starts off, as it almost always does in the minds of this generation, with a bang. That's right, the season finales of basically every show on TV. Back to back. Within almost a week of each other. Needless to say, the absence of a fixed stable point like a mindless TV serial, can have a devastating effect on the life of a young adult. After sitting shell-shocked for at least a day or two, mumbling silent curses and collapsing face-down on a wide range of furniture (everything from chairs to table tops) most of us would finally lock on to the next best thing - video games. And then fall into despair again, realizing that most of the best titles, like Black Ops 2, come out in winter and most of the old classics, like Dragonball Z, fell out of fashion the day they started numbering the saiyan forms. (Seriously, super saiyan 1, 2, 4.5 or the square root of 6?) So then to what does the spotlight of our beleaguered attention turn to? Oh that's simple - Facebook.
Scroll, scroll, scroll, like, scroll, scroll, share, comment, scroll and stop. And then repeat until you've gone back at least 2 years on 20 of your friends' timelines. Facebook quota for the next two hours: complete. Now what? Hmm, think think think. Something new, something different, something mind boggling, amazing and unprecedented! Wait, what about ...ice cream? What follows is a wild dash to fridge and equally wild howl of sorrow realizing that the closest thing to ice cream in your fridge is a dubiously hued patch of semi-solid overspilled assortment of gravies from several variations of the same dinner. Bummer.
Well, well. What do we have here? A newspaper. Involuntary scanning of pages to finad recognizable terms or cartoons: Begin! Then begins the random flow of perplexing questions about life in general. Which came first? The printed text on the printer or the printer itself? The angry bird or it's egg? Sulphuric acid or the sulphuric acid added to form sulphuric acid in the Contact Process? Then even deeper questions. How does that imaginary man you see running alongside your car keep up with you? How long can you sleep before you get too tired of sleeping as an activity and need a rest to prevent severe physical exhaustion? Was that last question paradoxical? What does paradoxical even mean? And so on.
Eventually you'll find that somehow your mind shut down in protest and rebooted itself only the next day. Understandably, the only mystery about the entire procedure is how you woke up in bed and not upside down on the living room sofa where you recall fainting.
And that's that. The transient nature of the attention span of an average student at home during the summer break. A goldfish could probably achieve more, even with its 3 second memory. And this is only Day One. Perhaps if we fully understood the nature of the mind after a month of solitary self-instigated amusement we would better understand the working of the universe. In any case, its food for thought.
So, to continue on from where that delightfully pleasant song left off, what does our generation do in the measly 45 days of summer break our schools so generously give us? Surprisingly, observations here are practically invaluable to get to an answer: we sleep at home and flip through vague channels on the TV; we sleep at our relative's homes simultaneously re-watching old movies; We go out to malls and comfortably sleep in movie halls; we attend extra classes and never fail to sleep secretly in them as well; we leave the country and naturally sleep extensively there as well; we return home and call our friends over and finally sleep happily all over again in multiple sleepovers. In short, a thoroughly entertaining and satisfying month and a half.
Of course, to stray from the perfunctory path of this form of annual summer existence is an extremely hazardous notion on its own and yet despite that, I have decided to, wait for it, utilise some mental faculty in probing the general path our minds all follow in this season. Don't worry, set your loosely hanging jaws back into place, it shouldn't be too mind-numbingly difficult. I hope. So, without further ado, let's begin, shall we?
It starts off, as it almost always does in the minds of this generation, with a bang. That's right, the season finales of basically every show on TV. Back to back. Within almost a week of each other. Needless to say, the absence of a fixed stable point like a mindless TV serial, can have a devastating effect on the life of a young adult. After sitting shell-shocked for at least a day or two, mumbling silent curses and collapsing face-down on a wide range of furniture (everything from chairs to table tops) most of us would finally lock on to the next best thing - video games. And then fall into despair again, realizing that most of the best titles, like Black Ops 2, come out in winter and most of the old classics, like Dragonball Z, fell out of fashion the day they started numbering the saiyan forms. (Seriously, super saiyan 1, 2, 4.5 or the square root of 6?) So then to what does the spotlight of our beleaguered attention turn to? Oh that's simple - Facebook.
Scroll, scroll, scroll, like, scroll, scroll, share, comment, scroll and stop. And then repeat until you've gone back at least 2 years on 20 of your friends' timelines. Facebook quota for the next two hours: complete. Now what? Hmm, think think think. Something new, something different, something mind boggling, amazing and unprecedented! Wait, what about ...ice cream? What follows is a wild dash to fridge and equally wild howl of sorrow realizing that the closest thing to ice cream in your fridge is a dubiously hued patch of semi-solid overspilled assortment of gravies from several variations of the same dinner. Bummer.
Well, well. What do we have here? A newspaper. Involuntary scanning of pages to finad recognizable terms or cartoons: Begin! Then begins the random flow of perplexing questions about life in general. Which came first? The printed text on the printer or the printer itself? The angry bird or it's egg? Sulphuric acid or the sulphuric acid added to form sulphuric acid in the Contact Process? Then even deeper questions. How does that imaginary man you see running alongside your car keep up with you? How long can you sleep before you get too tired of sleeping as an activity and need a rest to prevent severe physical exhaustion? Was that last question paradoxical? What does paradoxical even mean? And so on.
Eventually you'll find that somehow your mind shut down in protest and rebooted itself only the next day. Understandably, the only mystery about the entire procedure is how you woke up in bed and not upside down on the living room sofa where you recall fainting.
And that's that. The transient nature of the attention span of an average student at home during the summer break. A goldfish could probably achieve more, even with its 3 second memory. And this is only Day One. Perhaps if we fully understood the nature of the mind after a month of solitary self-instigated amusement we would better understand the working of the universe. In any case, its food for thought.
Make ur posts short dude, I read a paragraph read scroll down scroll down fed some fish and now I am commenting :P
ReplyDeleteBTW, I hate the recaptcha thingy... can u please shut it?
ReplyDeleteGood. Keep feeding the fish. Or else they may be replaced with something more ... sinister.
ReplyDeleteRecaptcha? No way. What's the fun without it?