Proof that boredom isn't good for you

Ever done something completely irrational?
If you’re a woman, you don’t have to answer this.

Irrationality stems from two emotions:
1) Anger (“well fuck you, I hate you too, and my dress might look stupid, but at least I don’t have manboobs.”) (I don’t have manboobs, you dumb bitch).
2) Boredom.

I haven’t been bored for ages. But not to say that I haven’t too wiped the boredom floor with the wet rag of irrationality. Oh, I have.

I did something when I lived in France I am extremely embarrassed about. (Including some of the men I chose to fraternise with in the medium of a pull.)
Nobody I know has done this, perhaps because it is so psychotic.

Let me explain.

I was an au-pair in a minuscule little village in the French Alps. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it. The place was achingly beautiful, and my families looked after me like their own daughter. But. Sometimes weeks would go by when I’d do the same thing day-in day-out, and it is this type of routine that makes people like me go mental.

Part of my job entailed picking up children and shunting them across the countryside to their ballet or music lessons, and to and from school. Because it snowed frequently, this process wasn’t as cut and dry as it said in the brochure.

You had to put their snow suits on, layers of jerseys, socks, boots, hats, mittens, then carry them to the car, strap them in, while one pulls on your leg because he decides that now he needs to pee. Then drive them to school. Once there, you need to take off all the layers and pack them into their lockers. By the time I got home, excited ‘cos now I could eat Pringles on the couch spreadeagle and watch porn, I was exhausted.
So I made this process more exhilarating for myself.

There was one very bored woman, who looked exactly like a middle-aged Heidi who also dropped her kids at school. She probably watched Doublirege all day while her husband Jean-Paul went downtown to work at the Michelin tyre factory.
It all started when I decided to take the kids five minutes earlier to school, to make time for this dressing process, and yet found her there first, sitting in her Renault 5. She was always early, sitting in the same parking place every single day. She’d sneer at me as if to say, “Ah bon. I ween, I ween.”
It drove me bananas.

I’d show her.

Boredom and frustration turned into fully-fledged irrationality, when the next day I left ten minutes early. To my horror, she was there again. In the same place. The next day, fifteen minutes.
The enquiry: “Peas why are we going to school so early these days?”
“To beat Mademoiselle Heidi there, Joffrey.” By now, the school doors weren’t even open. But still the bitch was there before me.

I jumped to 30 minutes. And hark, one gleeful day, I was the first one in.
I slid smugly into her parking space.
The feeling of accomplishment, like after a long race, was overwhelming. Not so much five seconds later, the Renault 5 comes screaming around the corner with Heidi inside. Her face fell like a jackhammer into hot cement. I grinned, showing all my teeth.
I felt like I’d just stormed my own bastille.
To celebrate, I went home and stuffed three chocolate croissants into my pie-hole, washed it down with Beaujolais from the bottle, then devoured half a brie.

Thing is, we never said anything to each other for the entirety of a year. Nothing. Not a squeak. Even when standing side-by-side awkwardly, waiting for the teacher.
Mum phoned me one day and asked, “So, done anything exciting this week?”
“Most definitely. I beat this woman to school on Tuesday.”

This childish banter carried on for weeks. Sometimes she’d win, sometimes I would win, but sadly, it was mostly me. One day I feared the competition, the sheer thrill of driving Heidi into a quiet Hell, had finally run its course.
She arrived a whole 7 minutes after the bell had rung..
Uncharacteristic.
Immediately suspicious – what was she up to?
I smelt a rat.
I put it down to the Renault 5’s battery going flat, because the very next day she was back in action.

Things started bordering on the ridiculeux. I had to stop, take a step back and reassess my life when I was there 55 minutes early one morning. Only an hour after I had last picked them up. The competition and excitement had worn thin, I had become mademoiselle crazypants.

So I got a life, found friends and resorted back to French porn and Pringles.

Hell I miss those days.