The Boring Month of May

Fifteen-year-old Goethe Garcia is bored. Not only did her parents give her that wretched name, but school is almost over. Goethe is a Goth. She sits in the back of the classroom and acts bored, regardless of who the teacher is or what the subject it. At lunch she hangs out in "Smoke Alley" with her Goth friends, and with the Emos, too, even though she and the other Goths secretly think the Emos are weird, and refer to them as Emus when they aren't round. But Goethe secretly loves school. She loves every subject and every teacher. She loves the nerds who get the good grades. She doesn't know why she is trapped in Goth black. Once you get into it, it's just hard to get out. She dreads the long boring summer without the school she secretly loves so much.

Sixty-year-old math teacher Prosper "Slim" Pickens is bored. The difference is, he loves boredom. He looks forward to the long boring summer. The state school board just raised the retirement age again. He has to work another six years. He's not at all sure he can last that long. He wants boredom so much that he has started the summer early. He hasn't told the principal or the students, but he's already practicing for summer by being in school in body only.

Seventy-three-year-old Nate Cooper is bored. The folk dance season is over. All year, he has gone to every folk dance and danced every dance. He's lonely. Evelyn died a year ago. At the folk dances, he gets to hold hands with women, watch them move, see their smiles. But now the season is over, and he sits by himself, and wonders...

Thirty-four-year-old Kim Radatz is bored. She so much wants May to be special. It's her last month before the kids are home for the summer. But a simple month, even full of lilacs and redbuds, can't be exciting enough for a desperate mother. She knows it is her own fault, for getting her hopes too high, but she is bored with May and its false promises.

Twenty-eight-year-old Josie Williams is bored. Ski season is over. All winter long she flew down the Tetons Bleu in the east part of Periwinkle County, and traveled all over the world to race. Now she has to put her Iowa State turf management degree to work, grooming the greens at the Pine Slopes Golf Course. Golf slopes just don't have the excitement of ski slopes.

Fifty-nine-year-old Alexandra DeVault is bored. She finally got to be in charge of the chancel at St. Mortimer's Epispocal. It was an exciting year. Now, though, once Pentecost is over, it's Ordinary Time. No special decorations, no color changes, no opportunity for her altar ego to flourish.

Eighty-nine-year-old Richard Lybarger is bored. He made it through the winter. He doesn't want to face the summer, too, so he's going to die before May is over. Undertakers and pastors know that May and October are the big dying months for folks like Richard. Once you've started the winter, it's interesting to see if you can make it through to spring. The same with once you've started the summer--might as well wait until October. But once you've made it through, the prospect of another summer or another winter is just too boring.