Nothing much...

Seeing as I don't have anything to say at the moment, I think I'll write a column about nothing. Remember Seinfeld? His whole show was about nothing and see where it got him. One can only hope…

There is actually a lot to say about nothing. There is always a whole bunch of nothing that happens every day. Ask your kid when they come home from school "What did you learn today?"

"Nothing." they say. "How about homework?" you ask. "Nope, don't have anything" they reply. Makes you wonder what they teach at schools these days. It almost makes me want to keep them home to do the chores they haven't done for five weeks.

Nothing is even more apparent during those wonderful summer months when the little tykes are home all day. Their dulcet tones waft throughout the house, repeating the summertime anthem, "Mom, Dad, there's nothing to do!"

This while you are frantically juggling cooking, cleaning, walking the dog, working, shopping, cutting the grass and driving them everywhere all day. Ask them to help - go on, I dare you.

Same thing goes for work some days. You get up at 6:00 am, shower, eat breakfast, brush your teeth and head to work, fighting traffic all the way. You spend eight to ten hours in your cubicle shuffling paper around, answering phone calls and reading the four hundred and eighty-two emails, all marked URGENT. You fight the traffic all the way home and realize that you can't remember anything in particular about the day.

Nothing. It's everywhere.

I've been as busy as an ant at a church picnic for an entire day. When my darling wife asked me what I did, I blinked a couple of times, tried to recall something, anything and came up with, "Nothing, dear. How was your day?"

Don't you love calling a friend you haven't seen for a long while? Eager to catch up, you ask, "So, what's new?" and they say "Not much, what's new with you?" Then there's a long silence as you try to think of something to say and once again, nothing comes to mind.

There you go - all caught up in 3.5 seconds. Makes for a cheap long distance telephone bill, doesn't it?

We now have four thousand, six hundred and twenty three channels on the TV. You can spend the better part of the evening scrolling through each one and more often than not, there's nothing worth watching.

Doing nothing can now be taken to great heights with the advent of the Internet. What with the blogs, video sites, social media sites like Facebook and Google+ and the ever present Twitter, people have spent entire days checking their accounts and posting, tweeting and re-tweeting, uploading and downloading.  Then they realize that they've actually done nothing all day, but boy, are they tired.

One of the most dangerous of the nothings is what happens to guys, when they see their upset girlfriend/wife/significant other. Despite trying not to ask, knowing that it will only get them deeper in trouble, the man will ask, "What's the matter, dear?"

"Nothing's the matter!" she says, tearfully. I hate that. It's like opening the trunk of a car and seeing a bomb with a timer set to ten seconds and counting. I think a lot of guys would rather tackle the bomb than get that particular answer.

So there you go. That's my take on nothing. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. There's more to nothing than I thought. Maybe we can get something from nothing after all…

(Thanks to Scott Adams for the Dilbert cartoons!)