Pride and Patience

I was almost killed at work today. Stepping outside to return my sister’s birthday greeting phone call, I was nearly cut in half by the rotating door at the employee entrance. And it’s not just today. Every other time I try to leave the building, I feel like I’m jumping onto an out-of-control carousel. Now, I don’t mean to sound uptight, but I fail to see the necessity, or fun, in giving the bar one good last shove after stepping out of the door’s radius of death. You’d think people were trying to jump-start a fucking turboprop engine. I’m sorry if I sound bitter… I can still taste the adrenaline.

I’m beginning to understand, or try to understand, that it’s nothing intentional or malicious: it’s just symptomatic of a fundamental lack of patience. In everyone. Alright, it’s not fair for me to say that. I suppose for every handful of madcap souls, there’s someone like myself who’s hesitant to cross a double yellow line to pass someone in order to get to the red light first. Or who won’t pelt your car with coins if you need change at the toll booth. Or who will refrain from laying on the horn if you’re more than five feet off the bumper of the car in front of you in a construction zone. Or if you stop next to a school bus with flashing lights. Or for the elderly in a crosswalk, at a stop sign. I had a difficult ride home.

The problem is, of course, that for the slightly less high-strung (if more verbose), like myself, it is frustrating, and difficult, to not rationalize behaving in the same way. I admit, part of me enjoys being the straight man, if only because I… well, I’m passive aggressive and it’s a great way to extract revenge on individuals of whom I’m much too smart to confront about their anger issues. I’ve actually considered that my being… call it measured… only makes the less measured more reckless, but someone needs to keep society from degenerating to a scene from Naked Lunch (“So long flatfoot!”). Or at least be steady enough to document it. Or at least slow down the revolving door when there is someone walking behind you whom you KNOW will be coming through after you.

I will admit, I haven’t been immune to the hurrying trend. I’ve found myself walking faster lately. That’s right, walking faster. I don’t even notice unless something happens, like I drop a pen and before it hits the ground I am twenty feet away. But it’s distressing… the best compliment I’ve ever been given was from Kate Dailey, who told me she loved that I took long, slow strides… she loved the way I walked. And since then, I have too. I’ve always walked slowly, observing… never in a hurry to get where I was going. But lately, and I swear it’s because everyone around seems so unpleasant, I haven’t found much of interest to observe. When I’m comfortable, with friends, I don’t say much because it’s so nice to see people acting civil towards each other, I just swim in it. It’s wonderful.

But that makes me wonder… maybe I simply haven’t gotten to the point where I am so tired of miserable humanity that I speed through every intersection, every revolving door, just to get someplace I’m comfortable, where I can float on pleasantries… or maybe, hopefully, I have just enough tolerance to smile sadly and shake my head without becoming part of it. Because the world is beautiful, faces and potholes, and when I remind myself, I can slow down a step, even wait for the door to stop before passing through it.