The Quest to Cure My Boredom
By Zoe Figueroa
It was a rainy day during distance learning when the whole class had their videos turned off, the room was filled with the smell of fresh laundry from the morning, and the only thing I could hear throughout the house was the teacher speaking on Zoom, bouncing off the walls of every room. I was curled up in a warm blanket trying to prevent the cold air in the house from reaching me, and to be completely honest, it was a total vibe: just peaceful and still. But when this went on for another month, then 2 months, and then a whole year, I was ready for a change.
Most of my time during the first wave of the COVID pandemic was spent online for Zoom classes, on Netflix, or roaming around the house mindlessly because I had nothing to do. This led me to realize that my boredom could be cured if only I had something else to take care of, something that could occupy me when Netflix and naps just didn’t cut it anymore. So I tried out some different things to help with this.
The first thing I tried was to spend 80% of my time in the kitchen, cooking stuff with any food I could get my hands on. I cooked things like bread, cupcakes, penne, and french rolls. The kitchen smelled like food all the time. But my parents shut that down after they heard that groceries were running low because of COVID. I don’t know the complete details about that, but I’m sure another thing that contributed to their decision was that there was literally nobody in the house to eat the food I made, and quite frankly, I wasn’t a great cook.
So the next thing I tried to do to cure my boredom was hoverboard around the house in circles everyday until my parents thought I had gone insane. I got my hoverboard as a gift and hadn’t used it quite a lot, so I thought that DL would be a perfect time to test it out. But my parents suggested that I try and find another hobby because I almost tore the house apart trying to learn. I couldn’t find anything that really spoke to me, so I mostly sat around the house doing nothing for the majority of online school. But when 2020 began, I was ready to pitch the idea to my parents about getting a pet.
I walked into the living room where my parents were sitting next to each other watching a show, and kindly asked them to pause it. “I know that this seems sudden, but I think that because of DL, it would be beneficial for me to get a pet. It doesn’t have to be hard to take care of. Lately I’ve been feeling lonely, so if you could consider your decision soon, I would really appreciate it.”
“I suppose we could find a medium maintenance pet for you. As long as I’m not allergic to it and it isn’t too hard for you to take care of. Remember, whatever it is, it isn’t going to be our responsibility. You will still need to take care of the cat,” my mother said. My dad agreed and that was it. My plan was officially in action.
We started looking at guinea pigs on an online website because I had seen the cutest one at the pet store near my house. It was super fluffy and adorably chubby. Every time I would come in to see it while my mom was buying cat food, it would just sit and stare at me. So this became a ritual every time I came to the pet store, to come and see the guinea pig, until it got adopted and went away.
I was sad at the moment, but I wasn’t done finding my next obsession yet. So the day I found out that it got adopted, I headed over to the parakeet section of the pet store. There were so many of them and they were all unique and had different colors and personalities. The way they almost floated around the cage mesmerized me. There were bright paintings of rainbow polka dots all around the area, which brought out the different colors of their feathers. But I remembered that I had a friend who said that they could be hard to take care of and that hers made way too much noise. And another friend told me hers tried to make a run for it when she took it out of its cage. But I probably shouldn’t have mentioned those stories to my mom because she immediately rejected that idea after I pitched it to her.
I had grown so tired of frantically searching in vain for a pet. So I took a break. And during my time of self-reflection, I thought I had finally found the perfect solution. The gorgeous answer that had been hiding itself in plain sight this whole time. “I should get a rabbit!” I thought to myself.
I had even made a pro’s and con’s list about having a rabbit in the house that consisted of only two key factors. Con: the cat would probably not enjoy a bunny taking her throne. Pro: bunnies are very entertaining and playful. And so that settled it. I needed to get a bunny. Sure it may have been impulsive but could you have blamed me? It took long enough to find a compromise in the first place. So we looked around for about two weeks until we found the perfect rabbit on an online fostering website. And just as I was about to foster it and my boredom was gonna be cured, my parents pulled the plug.
At first I was mad at them for being so selfish and unreasonable, until I realized that maybe I could’ve been the foolish one if I had actually decided to foster that rabbit. You see, my parents weren’t big pet people at the time, but they knew how important it would be for me to get one. So they secretly devised a plan against my will to adopt a hypoallergenic puppy for me. But I didn’t know that back then so I thought that they had said no to the rabbit because they were just being plain rude when in reality they were saving the opportunity for me to get a dog.
I had no more stamina for finding a pet. It had been a long time of searching, so I just gave up. I just decided to be content with my old cat and move on. And this was fine by me. Then on a warm and sunny summer day, to my surprise, I got my dog. I was wrapping a birthday present and listening to music when my mom walked into my room.
“Can you take the cat's crate out of your room for a second?” she asked. I thought this was quite suspicious considering that she never asked this before. But I did it anyway. Then she took my hand and led me outside to a bench next to our gate. As I sat down confused about what was going on, she instructed me to close my eyes, “Wait here for a second. and whatever you do, don’t peek.”
But right before I closed my eyes, I caught a glimpse of my dad holding something fuzzy as he walked in the gate, and I swore it was moving. I immediately started overthinking. Then I felt his hands placing the furry thing on my lap and I randomly started smelling soap or some type of cleaning supply. The almost feathery weight on my lap couldn’t have been heavy enough to be a rabbit or light enough to be a guinea pig. I knew that for sure. It didn’t make it any less shocking when I saw my new dog right in front of me. I was so happy that I finally had gotten a puppy after all that time I would've gotten a rabbit instead.
He had apricot fur that was super buttery soft and warm from the sun. It turned out that he smelled like soap because he had just gotten a bath before my parents picked him up. But he didn't have a strong pungent soap smell. It was actually quite soothing. As he lay down in my lap, I felt immediately calm.
He was about as small as both of my hands laying side by side. And he was the absolute definition of my dream dog. I felt so grateful to finally have him. My heart was warm and I felt as happy as I possibly could be. He seemed so fragile and sleepy when he was laying on my lap and he didn’t seem to move at all. I didn’t want to stand up because I was afraid I would accidentally make him fall off of my lap.
“So what are you going to name him?” my dad asked, “He came with the name Peanut, but I bet you probably have been curating names for a while now.” I laughed without moving a muscle because I still didn’t want to move the dog around. And I decided that I wanted to name him Tucker. It was a random name that I had gotten off of a website for unconventional dog names. But I think it kind of suited him well.
A few months later, he started to grow very quickly. And he became way larger than we thought. My mom thought that we got the same breed of dog as the one on the website we saw before, and she said that the breed was only supposed to grow up to be 8 pounds. But it was clear to us that Tucker was going to surpass 8 pounds much faster than we thought. This was very suspicious to me, so I told my parents that we should check his papers just to make sure he was the breed we thought he was. But they said something about him not having those kinds of papers or something which made me even more suspicious.
It seemed too good to be true, but very weird as well. He was cute, looked exactly like the breed we thought he was (even though he wasn’t), got along with the cat, and my mom wasn’t allergic to him. So that was enough for me. Apparently it wasn’t for my parents though. They did a dog DNA test and it turned out that he was absolutely not the breed we thought he was.
He was mixed with all of these random breeds that we definitely did not anticipate we would have to deal with. So I said that we should learn to make do with what we had, and that if my mom got more allergic to him, then maybe we could find a solution. I was already super attached to Tucker though, so I don’t think I would’ve traded him out.
Apart from the whole dog scam, I think Tucker turned out to be about 24 pounds and is still alive today. My mom still isn’t allergic and my cat got along with Tucker until she passed away. For the rest of the pandemic, I didn’t feel lonely or sad anymore because of my wonderful new puppy, Netflix, and naps.
