Patience is a Pain in the Ass

It's not as hard as working on an oil rig or serving in the military but still...

My lifetime has been split into two distinct phases: the first (roughly between being born and sometime in the 1990's) when waiting for the things I want or would like to happen was the standard operating procedure and second, when I want my drive-thru burger mere seconds from thinking I want it.

In the first phase, I had to wait for minutes for the AOL modem to connect to the internet, making that godawful squawk, so that I could take forty minutes to look up some obscure bit of information, staring at the loading bar like a dog waiting for someone to open the door to the back yard so I could take a shit without getting yelled at.

Now, I get out-of-control furious that I might have to be burdened with a four second delay on a DuckDuckGo search to find out what other movies that one actor was in before I saw him in The Menu.

Things you still have to muster patience for in 2023 include actual real life mechanics like boiling an egg, physically waiting in line at an understaffed Walgreens, or wondering why an airline can process your payment in reverse time but takes ten business days to issue a refund. When you're trained to expect instant gratification, patience becomes a pain in the ass.

Last night, my sister brought over her Taco Night fixings and we had dinner together—dad, mom, she and I—and my mom wondered if I wanted to go to the professional indoor soccer game with she and my sibling. "You never went to these games when you were in high school," she tosses out. "You might like it."

Soccer takes patience to enjoy. It's an incredibly slow game despite all the running, like watching a bunch of athletes do laps and once or twice in three hours put a ball in a net. I don't dig sports enough for that kind of patience so I demur.

"You never did anything with us when you were in high school. I remember you missing family vacations because... I don't know why."

I don't remember them going on family vacations but, it turns out, I was so busy with band, choir, debate, forensics, and the all-encompassing chase for high school pussy that I didn't even notice. Apparently, they went Aruba and I completely missed it. In my impatience to be doing the things I skipped seminal family history.

SIDENOTE: Apparently the word 'seminal' has been stricken from the vocabulary at Stanford because the term reinforces male dominated language. Other words that can get you shitcanned at that bastion of rational thought are basket case, blind study, blind review, handicapped, handicapped space, lame, brave, tribe, mankind, manpower, stand up meeting, senile, you guys, abort, peanut gallery, American, Hispanic, user, victim, master, rule of thumb, disabled person. Yes, patience is a pain in the ass but not like being told you can no longer say 'American' without censure. I patiently await the days when we only speak in grunts and facial expressions.

In the transfer of time from 2022 to 2023, I am impatiently counting the minutes. I have a new job that starts on January 3rd which means I have an apartment to move into in a month or two which means I can start paying back both loans and credit cards that kept me from living in my Prius these past eight months which means I can start the countdown for getting out of Wichita to a locale with a bit more to do and see which means I'm very likely to miss the next fucking family vacation to Aruba.

Imagine the scene (or moment) from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery as Powers commandeers a steamroller and drives it slowly toward the security guard. The guard can see his demise coming and holds out his hand, screaming "STOOOOOOOPPPPP!" Powers could turn the steamroller. The guard could step out of the way. Both have it in their heads to do so but that would blow the bit.

Like the steamroller, change comes very slowly in life. Our decisions to either turn the wheel away from disaster or to move out of its way is likewise a ridiculously slow process. Urgency has little to with whether or not change happens. You either agree with yourself to move out of the way or get squashed by the inevitability of your own end.

A guy decides he's 80 pounds overweight. The anxiety sets in that he must lose the weight or continue to balloon up until he needs a scooter to traverse Great America as he sucks down his 4 gallon tub of Mountain Dew. It is an immediate focus. He wants to lose it NOW. Except that truly losing 80 pounds and keeping it off isn't a thing that happens due to urgency. It takes time. It takes perseverance. It takes patience.

Pain. In. The. Ass.

Hell, one could argue that in my impatience to conquer Las Vegas, I missed the multiple 'vacations' my wife was taking, head down, focused on the tasks I'd set for myself, and letting what seems obvious now be oblivious then.

I'm now sitting at a busy intersection, staring at the red light of 2022, repeating over and over "Turn green. Turn Green. Turn Green." as if my mantra has anything at all to do with the mechanics of the light changing. While I'm rocking back and forth, chanting for change, I just missed the naked guy on the corner to my right barking like a dog and hurling cans at my car.

Patience is a pain in the ass but soccer? Nah, soccer sucks.