i love boring things

+ a poll about a notebook chat

Sometime between the ages of seven and ten years old, I developed a weird little game. I would go into the backyard of my grandmother’s house with some aluminum foil and a plastic container full of water. I would then make boats out of the foil and then pretend they were my invention that I was demonstrating on TV. (See how they float!) I would nod and answer inaudible questions in what I thought of as “interview voice,” talking about the uses of my invention and how I came up with it and why you ought to have one of your own. You see, if you made the same piece of aluminum foil into a ball, it would sink. But I, genius, had made it into—a boat.

If I had to guess why I did this, I’d say I was excited by my boats but had run out of people in my immediate area to show them to. Even if your parents manage to act reasonably thrilled every time you show them the same aluminum boat, you are still aware that it’s no longer news to them. They’re not really taking in new information. They’ve he…