There is a phrase that my dad says to me frequently: “Hey, shorty, where’s the fire?”
I have a tremendous lack of patience. I creep forward at every red light and rush through every grocery run. I want to read a menu while I wait for a table. I just want to start.
Tough luck for me: humans spend an average of three to four years of their lives just waiting. The DMV, the doctor’s office, customs lines – some waits are inevitable, and some are chosen. But in the end, we just want them to be worth it.
Over fall break, I went to a blues club in Chicago with my sister and some friends. We noticed before our cab even pulled up that there was a line spanning the length of almost the entire block, but we weren’t deterred: we were dead set on this place.
As we took our place in line, our attention inevitably shifted to the 5-foot-2-inch man dressed head to toe in baby pink a few feet ahead of us: leather shoes, fedora, and a suit-coat down to his ankles. He wore dangly, gold, guitar-shaped earrings and smoked a cigarette in the street.
“Someone got dressed for Sunday service a little too early,” one of my friends said, and we all burst out laughing.
Once our hands were stamped and holding drinks, we saw the man in pink onstage, strumming a guitar and singing Stevie Wonder. We rushed to the dance floor and that’s where we stayed till 3 a.m., moving stupidly to the music, sweating off our make-up and whipping up our meticulously styled hair into haphazard ponytails.
The next morning, our favorite breakfast spot was running a thirty-minute wait. We put our name on the list without a second thought.
It wasn’t until long after our plates were cleared that I started giving the whole weekend some thought, and I noticed the theme stitched throughout: waiting.
The things we wait for say more about us than we think. In a world where we each keep stacks of carry-out menus and live on streets lined with bars, we’ve got more than enough room to be selective. We could easily be sat immediately at any restaurant at any given time. So why do we wait?
When we’re kids, we’re taught patience is a virtue. We’re told waiting in line is just part of life.
But that’s all it is – a part. It’s a way to test yourself, to figure yourself out. You see a two-hour wait for a rollercoaster ride. Do you stand in line? If you love that ride, you will. Simple.
Millions of people line up at Apple stores ever time a new iPhone is released, and plenty of women will do the same at Coach stores. I’m not one of them, but no judgment. It’s their prerogative. They know what they like, and what we like, – what we wait for says quite a bit about who we are.
By the time we’re 75, we’ll have spent a few years waiting. In other words, we’ll know exactly what we like and what we don’t. But I don’t think getting older and finding a niche means our lives have to be predictable little daily routines. In fact, that’s exactly what I don’t want.
So when my hair’s gray and my knuckles are stiff, I’d like to remember that man in the pink suit, how we laughed at him first and then danced to his songs. I’d like to remember that every once in a while, there’s a tiny delight standing on the curb, smoking a cigarette, just waiting to show us that we’re in for something much better than we anticipate. That’s exactly where the fire is.