Thanks to impatience, rush hour is the slowest time to drive to and from work. Thanks a heap, irony.
To quote your grandparents (let me pull my pants up real quick), what happened to patience? Halloween costumes have been on display since Labor Day; Christmas was apparently pushed forward to February; and election primaries will likely start November this year. Why the rush on profits/screwing that will happen inevitably as scheduled?
Don’t get me wrong, though. You will hear the full fury of my whiny Toyota horn if you sit at a green light. I’d kill my neighbors if it meant my Internet would run faster, which is one helluva feat since it’s cable–tomorrow’s New York Times today! And I get irritable when sitting in the McDonald’s drive-“thru” for 15 minutes, grumbling impotently every week that “I’ll never eat here again.” I also blame my fiance if she doesn’t orgasm in the first 30 seconds of sex; she missed her chance, and that train is flown and sagging.
So maybe I’m just observing my own impatience, but I’m pretty sure everyone else is just as pissed off at slowpokes and hopped up on caffeine as I am (because I was too impatient leveling my LOTRO champion to sleep). I know, I know: I’m taking too long to write this. Calm down and do your breathing exercises.
Here’s an example we’re all familiar with/guilty of: speeding and running red lights.
Just last week, I watched two cars collide head-on right in front of me in an intersection. How close was I? I almost shrilled like a little girl, put my car in reverse and rear-ended the car waiting behind mine at our red light. Fortunately, I didn’t, mostly because I, too, was running late for work, so I was ready for the light to turn green and swerve around the twisted metal. The accident happened because on person was trying to make a left turn before the oncoming traffic reached him. Obviously, he didn’t make it. (Not like that: he was still alive and got out of his car to check on the crying woman in the other car.)
In fact, most of the accidents I’ve seen are because of impatience. That car that inches too far into the intersection, waiting for their light to turn green. The very important person who doesn’t observe red lights. The driver that changes lanes without looking because they missed the turn for Taco Bell, but doesn’t have the time to drive on and turn around at the next light.
Taco Bell, McDonald’s … There’s another example. We’re so impatient that we’d rather eat fast “food” than pack a lunch, eat at home or go to a restaurant with actual biological food bits.
Once that diet makes us fat, we then complain that it’s too hard to get back in shape (e.g., it takes too long). “6 Minute Abs” used to be fast enough, but that’s old news. Duct tape some electrodes to my nipples, staple my stomach to the size of a raisin and lipo off the excess; whatever it takes, make it snappy because my reunion’s next week!
And let’s not forget miracle-bodies by “flaxseed oil.” Body-building is barely a sport anymore if anyone can get the results of years of training (not to mention a roll of the genetic dice) in months. High school athletes are even doping up now to play like professionals, impatient with the natural growth cycle of adolescents.
Do you realize that, at this very moment, a high school freshman is signing an obligation statement to play basketball for a university? The parents are too impatient to let the kid grow up and decide on a career that doesn’t involve a ball and Nikes. The school’s too impatient to wait for atheltes that have spent four years of high school being, well, high schoolers. And the kid’s too impatient to become a millionaire, though who knows what will happen to him in three years. Of course, this is all because the college knows that if they wait too long, he’ll sign his NBA contract before his first blowjob.
Everyone I know from college is getting a huge letdown. We aren’t managers or making six-figures yet. Nobody’s put us on the big screen or published that novel we’re too impatient to type up right now. (Yeah, I should start working on that again.) We’re financing cars and other big ticket items to pay for them later, while paying off student loans, instead of–holy crap–waiting until we can afford them.
So we work overtime and weekends because we were impatient for debt, and our bosses were too impatient to give a realistic deadline to an impatient customer. And if that customer is the government, then they’re impatient because we hastily elected an president in November 2007, who had to rapidly expand the government because he or she was too impatient to wait for weapons inspectors in Sandistan.
Finally, there’s cheating in marriage. I don’t care about cheating in unmarried relationships because the aren’t real commitment other than wishful thinking. But cheating on your spouse because the magic is dead or you want to date again is about as impatient as you can get. Take a note from the past and get a divorce, or–even more patiently–wait for your spouse to die. Hell, even killing your spouse shows more patience because you’ll have to make plans to cover up the body and DNA evidence.
There’s a national barometer for figuring out which human aspects we hold ideal: little girls’ names. Hope, Charity, Constance, Prudence and etc. were names chosen by parents to inspire such behavior in their own lives and/or that of their newborn. If we continue to celebrate and reward haste, it won’t be long before we actually met Impatience.
Don’t worry if you’re too impatient to get to know her. She’ll be drafted because we were too impatient to let democracy naturally evolve in Glassistan (formely known as Sandistan).