As a kid I loved collecting the "extras" in snack packs (they were really the main point), battling the toys against each other, and making stories.
The stories were always dramatic: my favorite character would fall into a pinch, then pull off a dramatic win.
On a field I'd built from LEGO, I'd be busy making every character fight, losing track of time — then Mom would call me for dinner.
She'd also say, half exasperated, "Were you doing the 'shoo, boom, whoa' again?" (sound effects I made with my mouth).
I think everyone (especially boys) goes through something like this. I remember other kinds of play too.
Collecting trading cards, drawing, making original weapons out of scrap cardboard — all fun.
I remember enjoying each of those games a lot.
I was very bored, and I think I was absorbed in them.
Then around when I started preparing for middle-school entrance exams I got busy, and from middle school just commuting every day left me exhausted, so I don't recall feeling I had time to spare.
Hard to put precisely, but I feel I stopped doing clearly "kid-like" play.
Once you're an adult of a certain age, hanging out with friends isn't tag or play sword-fighting — it's mostly meals and going out.
Lately I've gotten into collecting goods, and looking at what I've gathered I notice: wait, isn't this the same as collecting snack-pack toys as a kid? (So far I haven't made them fight each other.)
I've also gone to the 100-yen shop, bought paints and clay, drawn pictures, and kneaded clay into random character models.
Honestly, it's ridiculously fun. Clay especially gets your hands dirty and cleanup is a hassle — but I felt absorbed the way I did in kindergarten.
What I'm doing is thoroughly regressive — and very fun.
Would I want to do it all day every day? No — but childhood play is simple and intuitively clear, so once you start it's easy to sink into.
Doing kid-like play brings back all kinds of memories and a slightly nostalgic feeling.
What changed? There are many variables, so you can't sum it up in one word — but lately I had one realization.
A representative work that the phrase "boyhood memories" brings up: Stand by Me.
I'd already watched it many times, but recently I saw something like a commentary.
In it, someone said that in Stand by Me's adventure of "going to find the body," the protagonists aren't enjoying the adventure from the bottom of their hearts.
In other words: the kids are all very bored, so they tag along because everyone else is — but something else would be fine too, and the adventure is a bit scary, so at a neat stopping point (getting dark, a dangerous place) they'd like to turn back, but they can't quite say so.
Honestly I'd never had that angle. Nostalgia had papered over it — but maybe childhood wasn't only deep absorption in everything; a lot of it may have been doing things because you were too bored / had nothing else to do.
Flipping that: the state of being bored out of your mind almost never comes back as an adult.
Even taking a week off, you can't completely stop thinking about work, and you won't reach "bored out of my mind."
I'm not desperate for a stretch of that kind of boredom — but if it comes again, when would that be?
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