The Art of the Wait

What is worse than going to the doctor’s office to “turn your head and cough” or hearing those immortal ear stimulating words that turns the average body to a quivering mass “put your feet up in the stirrups?” Waiting in line to do it! While spending your day in a medical office you can distract yourself in the latest magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue, or Teen Scene (yea us guys really like those). Note to Doctor’s office managers MAGAZINE VARIETY PLEASE! Give me something with some teeth like Highlights kids magazine. At lease that’s challenging and reminds me of being a juvenile again when hanging around wasn’t really a conscious issue. There are no articles in Highlights about “How to get your man to say your size 18 butt looks wonderful in those size 9 pants so you feel good about yourself!” You would think that a culture that is so in tuned to having it all, and having it now, would have found a way to avoid having to stand in line!

Delay! Is there anything that moves the soul in such a way? Waiting in lines and hopping from foot to foot is a great way to pass time and the benefits are untold. I think that’s how I learned to dance! Why is it everyplace I go there is a wait? Heck you don’t even have to leave the house to spend your time waiting. If you’ve got a large family there is always a wait for bathroom time which is why the proper industrial strength bathroom door lock is so important. As you know most 5 year olds can pick nearly any door lock just by turning the knob. This is because of the supernatural lock melting mechanism hidden cleverly under the skin up their sleeves. If yours doesn’t have the power consider yourself fortunate. They do this mind you at the worst possible moment. It doesn’t matter how private or intimate the moment. The precious so and so’s can just make you just lose it. At least in the bathroom you’re in the right place!

Simply making a phone call can result in you practicing the art of the wait! Before call waiting the “busy signal was the height of disappointment. Today nothing can equal saying hello and spouting off your complaint in a well rehearsed diatribe and then realizing you’ve dialed into an automated phone system. Typically after you realize you’re talking to a machine the response goes like this:

“Thank you for calling Don and Fred’s Pulled Pork Stand. Your call is very important to us” (understood to mean: you’re a boob for interrupting our employees during our office’s big computer solitaire tournament. That is why we have you trying to talk to a mechanical disembodied voice on this end). “Due

to the great pig fiasco at Mrs. O’Leary’s Farm our representatives have been inundated with a high volume of calls. Please stay on the line and a representative will be with you shortly.” Now if I’ve managed to figure out how to maneuver through the first fourteen levels of the automation by pounding the right buttons when prompted just to get to this message I’m vested! I gotta stay with the call to find out what kind of a fiasco can befall swine. After three to five additional seconds of silence they always add information which turns out to be a twist of the knife to the most patient caller. “There are 753 calls ahead of you and your approximate wait time will be a fortnight.” I can feel the pressure building behind my eyeballs as they begin to protrude making me look like Marty Feldman on steroids.

It all started at birth. I wanted out but something akin to the Marx Brothers was running the medical team and they held me back. When they finally got the forceps (which is Latin for suction cup boxing gloves) around my head to pull me out you would have thought it was a taffy pulling contest. This made for a lifetime of bewildered people asking “who’s the baby prizefighter with the black eyes?” Of course I had to live down the stigma of being two weeks late on top of looking like Rocky Balboa after a brawl.

In my high school yearbook the theme was “the line.” I should have known that it was a foreshadowing of greater things to come. It’s not so much the fact that you have to wait your turn that is frustrating. It’s more about sharing precious moments of your life surrounded by such colorful characters. Stimulating yes but I’m beginning to wonder if the powers that be are having a good laugh. I always manage to get behind either the guy who doesn’t know what a shower is or the lady who is spending her time in line laughing. Unfortunately she’s standing by herself. It never seems that I can find the “patience is a virtue” line either. Someone is either stressed, angry, crazy, or stinky!

Typically long lines include the pressed for time guy. We’ve all been him at one time or another. When it’s not you however it looks silly. He’s hopping from foot to foot in a pressure paced tension to get to the front of the line. Usually you can see the vein bulging in his neck and even count the heartbeat pulsation if you gawk long enough. The one I chuckle at the most is the crazy dude. You know the Charles Manson look alike with the spooky stare in his eyes. He handles his time waiting in an even more tense fashion. He screams about the injustice of having this unreasonable delay for something so trivial. It’s as if he’s too important to be forced to wait behind the dregs of society in the bank line just to be able to pick up money so he can get his months supply of peanut brittle. His favorite repeated and very audible sigh is “HUMPH!” I snicker very quietly to myself so as to not upset Charlie anymore.

The wacky woman who is going over her recipe for guacamole stew (out loud I might add) while asking her imaginary friend what they want for the dinner also amusingly helps pass the time. It also reminds me that I have to pick up a quart of milk, a lime and toenail clippers at the next stop I still have to make. I breathe a deep sigh as I wait. “Great” I think, “I’m sure at the grocery store there will be another line!”