Hanging out. It’s that fill-the-gap moment when mums wait for their child’s class to be over. Be it sport, be it dance, whatever – it’s what we do. Show up, wait, head home again.
I used to write shopping lists. Come up with more to do items, maybe even check a few off. But now it’s a Friday afternoon class, at the end of the week. Energy levels are lower.
A freebie will do just fine.
I can’t complain. The place where I wait has free magazines – the kind that are delivered there, weekly. There used to be one of those leaflet racks, too – specials at castles, places for day trips, that kind of thing.
I don’t necessarily choose to go and get one of these magazines. But it’s there, it’s free, I’m waiting, and I might as well. So goes marketing, so goes my attention span on a Friday.
I’m trying to recover from freebies. The thing is, they are so easy to come by, at least in cities. Easy to get taken up with what you might do at the weekend, in the summer; what will do as eye candy for the final 20 minutes of the class.
The thing with freebies is: there’s not really a good reason to say no. It’s easier to say yes. Yes to bringing the magazine home, yes to maybe keeping a few bits of (hopefully) useful information.
Thing is: today I even took my book along. I had something for me. And instead, I flicked through the magazine because it didn’t demand too much of me. At the end of the school week, that can be feel more appealing.
I think the thing about a found item is that, when you find it, you recognise some form of value to it. I do see the value to winding down before zooming home to cook tea, yes. But ‘because it’s there’ doesn’t feel so valuable.
But print freebies will float around you like an eddy of autumn leaves. On buses, through letter boxes, in sports centres. It is easy to let them cover the ground. It is easy to let them act as mulch, and go to sleep a little under the weight of them.
Maybe I’ll forgo them, next time I’m in, and see what happens. Maybe I will reach for the book instead. It would be a place to start.