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Childhood games break boredom

At the Malaga, Ohio farm where I grew up, there was an almost unlimited number of places to play. I have written about the play and work opportunities the big, red barn provided.

Behind the barn, a thicket of elderberry bushes covered one corner and blanketed the slope to the ravine. Dad made use of the dark purple berries to make jelly and wine. Here, my older brother, Joe, my younger brother, Jack, and I occasionally played during the long summer days.

Once we entered the thicket, the canopy of skinny, deep green elderberry leaves blocked the sun out. It was as though we were in an Ohio forest of 200 years ago. Sometimes, we discarded our socks, shoes, and shirts and pretended we were a band of Indians. A couple of elderberry stalks were sacrificed to make a bow fitted with a piece of binder twine. The bow wasn’t functional but slung across our shoulders, it looked real.

When I was 12 and in the middle of reading the Count of Monte Cristo, I returned to the elderberry patch and buried a cigar box containing my collection of miniatures. This collection included an inch-wide vinyl record, a pair of small dice, and a two-inch book complete with printed pages. I added some of my old pennies I had saved.

Periodically, I visited and exhumed the buried treasure. After carefully examining each piece, I reburied it. As the years went by, I forgot about my cache. One day I remembered it and retraced my path to the site where I thought it was hidden. Though my digging was furious, I was unsuccessful in my search. I attempted several other excavations with similar luck. The cigar box is most definitely gone by now but the coins and the small record lies inches under dirt at the corner of the red barn where the elderberries once commanded the hillside. I was disappointed with my loss but in the scope of life it was not that important.

My brothers and I had games to play such as monopoly and cards and two channels of television to watch, but they were reserved for rainy days. When the sun was out, so were we, inventing ways of entertaining ourselves. Joe usually took the lead but when he wasn’t around Jack and I found something to do. I believe leadership begins in childhood when we, as individuals or groups, solve the problem of boredom.

One summer day I whined to Mom, “I don’t have anything to do!” She looked at me with a surprised expression and said, “You have a 60-acre farm. Go find something to do.” From that point on, I took responsibility for my free time. The creativity of leaders is based in personal responsibility for their actions. They seldom wait for someone else to show the way. These leaders invent how to productively fill their work and leisure hours.

R. Glenn Ray, Ph.D., is the president of RayCom Learning. To learn more about Ray’s completely revised, third printing of The Facilitative Leader: Behaviors that Enable Success, visit his Web site, www.raycomlearning.com or call him at 740-629-4536. Everyday Leadership appears each Wednesday on the Business page.

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