MARK MY WORD: INSTITUTE BATTLES BURDEN OF BOREDOM

July's almost over and so is National Anti-Boredom Month.

In America, a month can't just be a month. It has to stand for something even if it's boring.

We can thank Alan Caruba for National Anti-Boredom Month.

The 57-year-old Caruba is a journalist-turned-freelance-writer who can be just plain boring.

But then it's hard to get excited about boredom.

Caruba founded The Boring Institute 11 years ago in America's most boring state -- New Jersey.

The state is so boring that even its NFL team -- the New York Giants -- won't claim it.

Caruba's one-man institute got off the ground in 1984 when he put out his first list of the most boring celebrities of the year.

Michael Jackson topped the list last year. This year's celebrities of boredom haven't been named yet.

Caruba claims he isn't bored much even when he is thinking about boredom. But he contends plenty of Americans are bored beyond belief.

He gets lots of letters from people who are so bored they actually write him for advice.

"It was obvious to me from the very beginning that boredom was affecting a lot of people," says Caruba, who reached that conclusion long before he saw Judge Ito on TV.

He says people drop out of school because they are bored.

"Most people would prefer not to use their brains for any reason," says Caruba.

He doesn't like television. "TV is extraordinarily boring. Essentially all television does is encourage you to sit there and watch other people have a life."

If you don't have a life or have seen entirely too much of the O.J. Simpson trial, you can pay $3.50 and get Caruba's guide to beating boredom.

Or you can become a parent.

My daughter, Becca, was born 3 1/2 years ago, and I haven't been bored since then.

Parents don't have time to be bored. Frustrated and exhausted, yes; but never bored.

It's never boring when Becca spills her cereal on the living room carpet or turns the kitchen counter into Niagara Falls when she pours water into plastic cups for her "tea parties."

It's never boring when Becca does the butterfly stroke in the bathtub or runs naked around the house when you are trying to get her dressed.

You rush around in the morning getting yourself ready for work and your child ready for school.

In the evening, you spend hours stepping around your daughter's Barbie dolls, which are holding a convention on your living room floor.

After that, you lobby your child about the benefits of bath and bed, as you try to avoid tripping over toys on the stairs.

Of course, when you are 3, bedtime is just plain boring, so you fight it.

This leads to the enormous crying stage, which precedes the suddenly silent, sound-asleep stage.

At that point, mom and dad are ready for some heavy duty sleep themselves. But at least they don't need advice from The Boring Institute, even in July.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.