waiting, for dummies.

if there is one thing i have become remarkably adept at as i've gotten older, it's waiting. a difficult skill to master when you have the kind of patience i have (i.e., none whatsoever), but somehow i've done it. sort of. it's really more an ongoing course of study than a finite goal.

of course, like so many other things, you become a little quicker to learn when it's a matter of necessity. and when you have lots of opportunity to practice.

and oh, the opportunities i've had.

privately, i consider the year i left college to be the year i really started my course; prior to that, my entire life was spent waiting to finish school, and that's all. upon undertaking my study of waiting, i started (as generally befits a neophyte) with the basics: waiting for the subway. waiting for my laundry to finish. waiting for water to boil. waiting for my hair dye to develop. these are simple exercises, but necessary foundations to have in place before you attempt to move on to the intermediate level. fortunately, they're also completely necessary if you want to have something that even vaguely approximates a life in this city (or anywhere), so mercifully most of us have a pretty steep learning curve on the basics.

next came the intermediate level: the exercises you undertake at this level, horrifically, tend to coincide with the arrival of that double-edged sundae, becoming a grown-up. intermediate exercises include (but are not limited to): waiting for your next paycheck so that you might eat something that's not rice. waiting for a doctor's appointment. waiting for a letter to arrive. waiting for customer service to patch you through to an actual human. waiting for the woman in front of you to finish counting out sixty-two dollars in pennies. this is all a bit trickier, and requires occasional supplementary sedation. if you've reached the intermediate level, don't be too hard on yourself if you stumble occasionally--the path to waiting greatness is littered with episodes of furious screaming on the phone line and impotent flailing in your apartment. if you forgive yourself your small missteps, you'll be far more prepared for the advanced class when it knocks down your door, as it invariably will.

the advanced class is more difficult to describe, because there's so very much of it. you'll probably spend your whole life trying to complete the advanced course, and fail miserably: no matter how much practice you get, there's always more to wait for. as a result, everyone's course is different. mine has recently included such great hits as: waiting for medical test results. waiting to get the appointment that will yield the aforementioned test results. waiting to get an appointment for a minor (but important) procedure. waiting for the necessary equipment to arrive to achieve said procedure. waiting to find out if it was completed successfully. waiting for bureaucracy to catch up. waiting for evidence that i am not, actually, an adopted alien pod baby. waiting for my father to call back. waiting to change this regime. waiting to officially announce our engagement. waiting, more recently, for today to end.

the waiting game is one that we never escape. i'm absolutely not its biggest fan, not by any stretch of the imagination. but, just as i was once good at algebra without harboring any great love for the subject, i find i'm getting better and better at doing it. and, i'd wager, unless you have a serious amphetamine habit that precludes you from having even the vaguest semblance of patience, so are you.

and well done on you! good luck with your continued study. i rather suspect we're all going to need it.