Recently, my music listening has been revolving whatever is on the radio at the time. 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, Garth’s Sirius XM station, and a healthy dose of country music. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with country music in the past but I’ve grown to love select parts of it without listening to so much that it all sounds the same.

One such song that plays on Garth’s channel (which is obviously a mixture of music that Garth Brooks enjoys) is a song called “Nothing to Do Town” by Dylan Scott. I was in the kitchen of the lodge at the right moment to hear Dylan explain why he wrote the song: namely, it’s an ode to his experience growing up. To what it’s like growing up in a town where there’s nothing to do.

I get it, I do. The whole point of this blog (if I can ever post consistently) is to address the weirdness and wonderfulness of such nothing-to-do towns. Dylan loves the town he grew up in, I love the town I grew up in, and the song is really catchy.

But.

I told my friend, “I’m going to look up the lyrics later, and if this song is about drinking, I am going to asdghlkgjfsdjkgl.”

(that’s the closest I can get to the sound I made)

“We got a little some, some’in we can throw on ice
Find us somewhere that we can drink it while the moon’s up high
Weekend girl and your boys, by a fire, makin’ noise
In a field on a Friday night
We got some sure straight songs that we turn up loud
Living it up ’till the sun comes back around
Who said there’s nothin’ to do?
Who said there’s nothin’ to do?
Who said there’s nothin’ to do?
In this nothin’-to-do town”

(I linked to the video because I wasn’t lying about the song being catchy)

This isn’t the time for me to go on a rant about my slice of Northwestern Ontario’s terrible drinking culture, though I want to. No, instead we’ll go this way:

Field parties are, indeed, somehow, a chief form of entertainment around here, especially for young people. Homecoming, Prom, and Grad parties pass year after year with no obvious plan for slowing down, and there’s somehow always whispers of a drunk teenager lighting a hay bale on fire.

However, a very strange thing happened in the summer of 2009, just before I turned 17.

I can’t remember where I heard of it first. It might’ve been Facebook, it might’ve been somebody complaining at Tim Hortons, but all of the sudden there was a rumour about a kick the can game that was happening in the late evening hours at a public park by the lake.

Kick. The. Can.

When was the last time I played Kick the Can? Never? I supervised some kids playing it when I had a co-op at an elementary school in Grade 11. But, somehow, the people I went to school with–the very same who had reputations for being partiers–were organizing games of Kick the Can.

Large games of Kick the Can.

Sober games of Kick the Can.

They posted the rules in the Facebook Group (oh, 2009) for the game and everything, which I include for your benefit because Kick the Can is…a nothing-to-do town sort of game.

Rules:

Seeker’s Objective – The person who’s it must capture every player. They will do this by looking around the playing area and when they spot someone shout 123 (hider’s name). If by any chance the seeker says the incorrect name then he/she has to go back and touch the can before they can call any other names.

Hider’s Objective – The hiders must stay hidden for as long as possible or free other players from the jail. The hider’s main objective is to kick the can so the seeker has to put it back in place. If the seeker calls a wrong name then the hider has a chance to change there position or kick the can before the seeker touches the can. The hider can also free other players from the jail by kicking the can as far as possible because that determines how much time you have to evade the seeker.

Eventually they were put to an end by the Powers That Be of public opinion (nothing-to-do towns, after all, have nothing to do for a reason), but that’s not the only way to make your own fun in a nothing-to-do town. There are things like Car Hide and Seek. Or Midnight Urban Mantracker. Or broomball. Or Ultimate Frisbee. Or ice cream dates. Or carpooling across the border because that’s the closest theatre to see a movie. Or trying the doors of abandoned buildings to see if one of them is open. Or taking the long way home with the radio cranked up.

And you know what? I think Dylan Scott gets it. I bet he has stories about the activities he created growing up in a nothing-to-do town that would rival my own.

I just wish more songs were written about those experiences, to be honest.