What Goes Around, Comes Around

I’m impatient. I’m the first to admit it. And there are occasions in the past when my impatience has bordered on intolerance, a fact about which I am not proud. It’s either genetic (from my father) or learned behavior (also from my father). Either way, he’s implicated. My mother had nothing to do with it. It is probably her influence that kept me (mostly) civilized despite my feelings.  

I felt impatient with my younger sister when we were small. She attracted negative attention to our sibling unit, especially from our father, because she wasn’t always compliant and didn’t read his signals that warned of an impending blast. If we were fooling around and my father warned us to cut it out, she always pushed the envelope and earned his roar in our direction. I’d wish very hard for her to be good or be quiet so he wouldn’t erupt.

One time I tried to teach her how to say the word ‘kerchief’ – a common word in the fifties as we wore them tied beneath our chins on windy days. I started out patiently enough. “Say ‘ker’,” I directed.   “Ker,” she responded obediently.  “Say ‘chief’,” I followed it up. “Chief,” she complied.  “Ker-chief,” I said triumphantly. Simple, I thought. Just say it. She massacred the word once again and I wanted to tear out my hair (or hers). After several more thwarted attempts, I changed my tactic, “Scarf. Say ‘scarf,’” I suggested, giving up before I lost it.  

 My impatience followed me to school.  Sitting in reading groups in first grade, I thought I might go crazy. S-s-s- e-e-e   S-s-s- puh- o – tt  rrr – uuu- nnn. “What is it you don’t get???” I would think, feeling nothing but frustration as certain classmates struggled to turn separate letters into words that made sense. I’d fidget in my seat, eager to get on with it, stifling sighs. Struggling to control my irritation, I’d read ahead to find out what was going to happen with Dick, Jane, and Sally, and by the time it was my turn, I’d be pages beyond where we officially were stuck, in search of something interesting. 

I was impatient in tap dance class when classmates messed up a routine and we had to start over. I recall Helen, who couldn’t remember the steps to the dance we did to Jingle Bell Rock. Since the dance was done with partners, it was imperative that she “get it” or she’d mess someone else up in the process. My teacher, Miss Joy, asked my mother if we might invite Helen over to practice the routine in our kitchen because my sister and I “got it.” We complied although I was irritated beyond words at the imposition. I had to reach very deep inside to summon up enough generosity to be able to drill Helen on the steps until she could keep up with her partner.  But I remember thinking, “What do you not remember about shuffle ball-change??”  I know – not nice.

I was also impatient in gym class when we learned square dancing. Now, granted, many kids, boys in particular, probably did not want to be there learning allemande left and allemande right – but for goodness sake, I would seethe silently, why can’t they remember their right from their left? It was humiliating when our gym teacher went around with a magic marker writing big Ls and Rs on our hands just because some kids didn’t get it.

Magnanimous? Not.

There are, however, dozens of my former research students who I’ve coaxed through math phobia who would not recognize me in those anecdotes. And certainly, people who watch me interact with my brother would swear I’m the epitome of patience.  I often laugh at myself, firmly believing that I received comeuppance for my impatience with other’s slowness the day he was born with Down Syndrome. 

I can wait easily and cheerfully in very long lines for entrance to some theme park ride or museum. When my daughter was young, while other parents abandoned ship and told their kids the line was just too long despite their wails, I would stock up on drinks for us, slather on the suntan lotion, and engage her in some conversation or game for the 60-90 minute wait. On the other hand, when she was a teenager, if I pulled into a strange driveway in an unfamiliar neighborhood to pick her up from a late-night party, and she didn’t appear right away, it would take about three minutes before I would start to feel ballistic.

Indecision has the same effect on my impatience meter.  I had a girlfriend who attended film school with me in the early eighties. She processed, reprocessed and overprocessed every decision she needed to make about her film, her personal life, her job – and even after she made a decision, she continued to question it.  I began to wonder why my insides did gymnastics whenever we were together, and one day I realized that I was stifling a primal scream.

But I also survived four years of shopping for prom dresses during my daughter’s journey through high school. Going from store to store, sitting in dressing room after dressing room while she anguished over body parts (which I couldn’t see anything wrong with) that didn’t look ‘right’ in one beautiful dress after another, somehow I managed to remember what it felt like to feel inadequate and followed her cheerfully to yet another store. 

       

So, when I saw the recent news article in the Wall Street Journal, titled “Get out of my way, you jerk!” I laughed aloud. The article was about sidewalk rage – which is akin to road rage, except that there are no cars involved. It is brought on for similar reasons – people make careless moves on the sidewalk (abrupt stops, sudden u-turns, signal-less lane changes), to which others react immediately and negatively. This is a “disorder” I understand. Sidewalk rage is also triggered by tourists who insist on holding hands and spreading out three or more deep, thus creating a walking wall through which no one can penetrate. However, tourists are the least of it – they come and go, and one can almost forgive them for they are blissfully unaware of the laws of the sidewalk. But New Yorkers should know better. I love the story one of my colleagues relates when he told someone on the sidewalk that he hoped they don't drive like they walk. I might think it but I’d never have the courage to be that blunt. I just swallow my irritation and keep going, fully and painfully aware that one day I may be the person in the way of someone impatient like me, wondering where everyone is going in such a hurry.