Mom I'm Bored....Again

Growing up in coastal North Carolina, there was never any shortage of beaches.Topsail beach, Carolina beach, Wrightsville Beach, Kure beach and all the major islands, were a mere 10-25 minutes away from my house.In the spring to summer months that's where most of the local kids hung out on the weekdays as well as the weekends. If you were bored you went to the beach and spent the next 4 hours wake boarding,kayaking, or paddle boarding. If the currents were too intense, the different pools in town were the next best option. But once it started getting chilly outside and you couldn't enter the water without a wet-suit, the options to stay busy were slim.

See, Wilmington N.C. is a relatively large sized town with around 120,000 people and continually growing(that's one reason why it takes 40 minutes to cross town). You would think that there would be a plethora of hang out spots to satisfy both the locals and tourists. But sadly, once you've done it once you've done it enough.

There's plenty of shopping centers, but it doesn't take long to visit all the stores in one afternoon. We have a movie theater, only one, and it gets expensive to spend 8.00 on a movie every weekend. Everything seems to be catered to the younger generation, so as I became a teenager there wasn't much going on to take up all the excess time.So as I grew up in participated in every activity possible-chorus, orchestra,dance,tennis, etc.You name it, I probably did it for some time.Though dance wasn't the best hobby for someone with two left feet. But even those activities weren't enough to keep me occupied in this beach town.

Many times after school in High School, my friends and I would keep ourselves busy by speeding through the school's parking lot trying to stay conspicuous to the police officers who were always guarding the front of the school. Sometimes my friends would do something stupid like get their car stuck in the mud and then we'd get yelled at by our JROTC teacher. If we got too bored wreaking havoc on our school's property, we'd head to the park. The Northchase park was the closest but Greenfield Lake had more space. We would go outside and blast music while playing basketball and eventually end up at McDonald's or Chick-Fil-A. We'd go to the local Mexican restaurant or hang out at Ian's house who just happened to have a hammock and a really awesome dad. One weekend a grew of about 12 of us were at his house, one thing led to another, and my friend wound up getting a second degree burn. That was the talk of the class for the rest of the school year.

Wilmington is one of the most beautiful places you'll ever visit if you decide to stay for a vacation, and if you're a tourist there's plenty of activities to fill your weekend.I'll even give you a complimentary tour for free.But, for us locals, it can get very monotonous and dull.There's only so many lifeguard towers you can climb in a day. Let's just say you had to learn to get creative with the free time you had during the week.