Waiting sucks.

There, now that I’ve said it, we can go on.

They say that “Patience comes to those who wait”. I say, “Can we move this along? I’ve got things to do.” Or “Good things come to those who wait”. I respond with “What if I settle for the mediocre just so I can get out of here?”

I really do hate to wait. But it seems that whenever I am in a hurry to go someplace or get something done, I end up breaking the world’s record for hitting the most consecutive red lights in a row, spend the day fulfilling my civic responsibility and showing up for jury duty or I realize that my driver’s license expires tomorrow and I spend the day counting the holes in the ceiling tiles in the waiting area at the DMV.

I’m sorry, but unless you are a guy with no hair who gets their jollies wearing nothing but a bed sheet wrapped around your body as you sit at the top of the mountain waiting for that next contestant to climb said mountain and play “Stump The Sage”, you hate waiting as much as I do.

I am going to ask a question and I would appreciate you all giving me an honest answer, so here goes: How many of you out there think that that last 10 seconds before the microwave finishes nuking your frozen burrito takes forever to end?

I do! I admit it. Mrs. Nickels has watched me pace back and forth like a caged puma waiting for that last 10 seconds to go by just so I can get my warmed up coffee out of that pulsating radiation box and get back to work. Those last ten seconds are excruciatingly slow! It’s like having to pee really badly and you can’t take a leak until a mythical sloth on Valium counts to ten, in Latin mind you, before you are allowed to use the bathroom.

But waiting is, unfortunately, part of life. We don’t like it, but so sad, too bad, it is part of life.

It seems we are always waiting for something. We go to the grocery store and we wait in line to pay for our food and such. And don’t tell me that while you are in the 15 items or less express line that you aren’t counting what people have in their carts. and you see the guy ahead of you with 42 items and you want to have him shot because you’ve just turned into the Line Nazi and everybody must follow the rules. Never mind the fact that the guy ahead of you has a 12 pack of beer, 18 pack of individually sliced sandwich cheese and a carton (12 count) of eggs. Now, for you non-math majors, 12+18+12 = 42. Oh sure, it LOOKS like 3 items, but we know better, don’t we! (Maniacal laughter inserted here)

When we were in high school, and this goes wayyyyy before the times where every pre-pubescent kid had his own mobile talking device, remember when we used to just “hover” around the kitchen phone. For those of you who don’t remember what like was like in the BCP (Before Cell Phone) era, we actually had to be at home to get a call. The phone was basically welded to the wall in your kitchen, and, depending on how wealthy your parents were, the cord connected to both the handset and the body of the said attached base unit to the wall ran anywhere from 1 to 7 feet in length. Of course, the longer the cord, the bigger illusion of privacy you had when talking to this week’s love of your life.

But do you remember having to wait for a phone call? And it wasn’t bad enough that you had to wait for your phone call when no one was on the phone, it got worse while waiting for someone to get off the phone so the line could be free so you can wait in tortured peace for your phone call.  And in the days before Caller ID, you had no idea who was calling. It could have been the aforementioned “This Week’s Love of Your Life”, it could have been your Aunt calling to tie up the line for next three hours while you are waiting for YOUR call to come in. Needless to say, waiting became something we were all subjected to.

It seems that we are always waiting for the next big event to happen to us in our lives. When we were 5 we couldn’t wait to be 6 so we’d be in First Grade. Then we couldn’t wait to be 10 because being a single digit age really wasn’t all that cool. Let us not forget when we couldn’t wait till we were 13 so we could be “Teenagers” because that was like we were Jr. Adults. Then we couldn’t wait till we were 16 so we could get our license and the mobile freedom it offered. Then we would count the days when we turned 18 and we became legal adults who could vote for our next psychotic president, go to college in other states far away from our parental units supervision, and sign up to die for our country. We thought 21 was an awesome age so we can legally (notice I said legally) drink and become good friends with our buddy Mr. Hangover.

Yes, Waiting sucks. But let me let you in on a little secret. If you spend all of your time waiting, you will never be doing. We have a life in which we must do. We are a species that hates to wait because it prevents us from doing. And it is in our doing where we obtained our success. Nobody every became successful by sitting around waiting for it, they got out and did it.

Yes, Waiting Sucks. But you know what sucks more? Regret. Don’t let you waiting for something better in your life turn into Regret because you didn’t do anything to achieve your goals and dreams.

So stop waiting…and get doing!

Oh, and one other thing.

If I ever catch you with more than 15 items in that express line, we are so going to have a serious talk.