Sitting in the waiting room at the auto dealership recently: some folks studied cell phones, one man scoped the newspaper, one lady knit, one guy just looked straight ahead. All in a holding pattern: waiting in the waiting room. Can’t go anywhere when your car’s in the shop. We were all immobilized, for the moment. How many other times have I felt stuck on pause—awaiting? Just all of my life. Like for mouth-open dentist prods. Or knee taps in the doctor’s office. Or final grades to graduate…hopefully. It’s all about timing, waiting for the right moment to finally arrive. And if we have been good kids, we’ve learned important life-lessons like, “Children should be seen and not heard”? But now that I’m a grown-up, when do we finally get to be seen, if not heard? I’m not a child, anymore. Do we always need to respect this semi-robotic, ‘shh, be still’ state? Isn’t there a time when we can finally ask, to take the initiative, to move?
Where does life-long, self-controlled, time/place reticence come from? Is it first grade — ‘raise your hand to speak’? Is it waiting for the coach to launch us into the game? Or does it come from teaching, ‘sit…stay!’ to our pets, our kids and even to ourselves. Is it possible that we can get so habituated to pausing our turn, being polite, giving others a chance that deferring becomes the norm? Alright, some situations demand patience, timing and turns—waiting for a bus, for an elevator, for an old lady to finish crossing the street. (She would have to be a lot older than me. BTW) But what about the rest of the time? How much of our lives are like that…waiting to be born, to talk, to walk, to drive a car. Not to mention love, marriage, kids, job. When did we learn to just chill, to tolerate, to accept the process? Seems, a large part of maturing is based on biding time…waiting. Like a prisoner eking out a life sentence or a pregnant woman in a nine-month holding pattern. It’s about patience. Okay, there’s a place for that. But how about toddlers breaking into a dance=just because. Or a football player breaking a move after a touchdown. Or a married couple driving around with banging cans and honking horns. Maybe sometimes, we just gotta do it, let it out
Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/
