Distant Tolerance

The phone finally rings and it is my Aunt Susan on the end of the line. We exchange pleasantries, and she asks how I've been doing. The last time we had spoken, I was sitting in midtown KC in a truck with no gasoline, with no money in my pocket or account, and a key in my wallet I was too impatient to find that would have gained me entrance to my business partner's home. It was about -5 degrees that night, and the wind was blowing like mad, so all things considered, I was doing pretty well.

"So how's everything going for you," she asks me. "Well, I left a message for you, and in it I claimed that you and Dallas struck me as very patient people. It wasn't until a few minutes after I left that message that I realized that Dallas is actually not at all patient, but that might tell you where I'm at right now. He seems patient to me."

My dad's brother has had many run-ins with impatience, many of them public. He teaches college courses now, and uses the rules on his syllabus mainly as guidelines for immediate expulsion from his sections. If he's anything like me, he probably delights in it. Less work for him. He just has to wait out people to make that one mistake. Most people can't make it thirteen weeks without making one error at a younger age...hell, I can't generally make it thirteen minutes.

"He parses out his patience. You know, I see that," she told me. "So did you just find out that you were impatient? Is this a new thing?"

"Hell no. I've always known I was impatient. What I didn't know was that I was the least patient person I've ever met. I dragged out the yearbooks, all my phone numbers, all my contacts in my email. I'm more impatient than all of them. It's really not even close."

"How long have you known you were the least patient person you've ever met?" she asked.

"Since about 3 this afternoon."

"Wow." Susan likes saying 'wow' when talking to me. I don't know if she does that with everyone, but I think she sees me as something of a case study for what can go wrong in the human mind. "I think you could see this as some sort of a breakthrough!"

"A breakthrough to what?" I asked.

"This is something you could take and really run with it. Do you write? You could write about your search to find just one person who is more impatient than you."

"I don't have the patience to do that right now."

"It could be an exercise in patience." She continued, "Do you blog? You could write about how your search is going in a blog or something." Susan was far more excited about this discovery than I was. I just wanted to know how to find some patience.

Susan used to drink quite a bit, apparently. I used to drink quantities that would kill people with patience, and additionally do any drugs that were available in my general area. So we have this in common, and I'm still trying to fight through the fact that I'm criminally insane even without the chemical influences. But I don't want to drink anymore. I just want to be a little bit more sane, and I'd like to have a lot more patience. I'm not even sure I'm an alcoholic anymore, but I know good and goddamned well that I'm far too impatient to drink right. I just don't properly know how to adjust to the lag time of the stuff hitting my bloodstream, and even then, it's not effective enough, and it's never quick enough...

"I have blogged, but no one will read it. It won't be interesting, and it won't be very good. I'm a dullard with a bad attitude."

"Well, see--that's interesting right there. Have you read Eggers?"

"Yeah, a little."

"See, the way you're talking, you kind of remind me of him right now." I didn't know if that was a good or a bad thing, but it was at least a point of reference. I wondered if Dave had any patience. Maybe I'll check into it soon. Most certainly his capacity outweighs mine in this field. "What else do you read?" she asked.

"I don't read anything anymore unless I can finish it in one setting. I don't have the capacity to put something down and pick it back up in the future," I explained. "I'm limited to things under about three hundred pages, and I have to be damned interested in something like that. I also have to have a fair chunk of time set aside. I'm stuck with magazine articles and online blurbs, mostly."

"Do you read anything contemporary?" she asked.

"Not really. I've been stuck thinking that people are generally getting dumber as the years pass by, and I don't want to get stuck in some modern rut of stupidity. I'm dumb enough already. I don't need any assistance."

"Wow." Again with the 'wows.' "Don't you think your analytical skills are pretty good, though? You were pretty good at math, right? Have you considering tutoring kids? They require a lot of patience."

I explained to her that I had done quite a bit of tutoring in the past, and that I was very good at it. For whatever reason, I have the ability to give children a free pass, as I figure they simply don't know better. It's bizarre to me, but I can sit patiently with a child and explain things in dozens of different ways until I can make a breakthrough with them. With adults, one shot if you're lucky, and I snap. I've coached a lot of little league, and I've umpired a bunch of ballgames. I've only kicked out coaches and idiotic parents, but I've kicked out more of them than I could possibly count. I'm the only person I know who has ever dismissed a fellow umpire from my crew during a game (there are only two for most little league affairs)...he certainly had it coming, and it drew an ovation from both teams' benches and fans. It did not sit well with the recreation commission, however...

"Do you remember reading 'Beowulf' back in high school?" she continued. "Maybe you could do something like that and turn your biggest weakness into an asset."

"If I could turn this thing into an asset it would be nothing short of miraculous," I told her.

"It can be done. I mean, it's possible, right?" she sounded as if she didn't believe herself too much anymore.

"I'll concede that anything is possible, but I'm not getting a lobotomy. I don't even know where to go these days to get one of those, and I don't particularly want one. I don't hate myself or anything, I just want to have quite a bit more tolerance. I think it would serve me well."

"Well, what do you do for entertainment? You have to have some fun, don't you?"

"Do you really want to know?" I asked. She was dancing on a pond of thin ice here...

"Shaww," she said in a thick New Yaak accent that comes through quite a little bit to a hayseed from Kansas. What a great woman...

"Just yesterday, I was driving down Main Street in KC, and the Scientology headquarters for the metro is down in Westport. Anyway, I'm going to the lumberyard, and I notice these idiots standing across the street from the entrance, and these fools are wearing robes and masks, and they've all got signs proclaiming that these fucking scientologists are somehow the end of the world as we know it, and I don't know how to describe it, other than to say that they pissed me off...bad. So I'm sitting at the stop light, looking at these idiots, and I'm just getting angrier and angrier...It's one thing to protest, I suppose, but these idiots are protesting an idea...and it's an idea anyone can easily ignore. I'm no scientologist, see...and I'm not even sympathetic to their cause, but I can appreciate the fact that a great number of people are so goddamned lame that they need shit like this. There are a lot of people that are worse off than me, even with all my faults. But these idiots out here protesting the dianetics lab--they're the worst kind of moron in my book. They aren't even protesting anything that matters! And what the fuck is the protest going to get them? More fucking attention for the scientologists! That's why I think those people suck.

"So I got this idea, and it's something I've been kicking around for a long time...I think I'm going to go down to City Hall for a permit to protest. Let this one sink in for a moment--I want to protest those person's first amendment right to protest. It's the only thing I can think of in the world that's dumber than what they're doing."

"Wow! Do you think that will get some media attention?"

"I don't care about that. I just want to do something that makes those assholes look as stupid as they are, and I want it to reflect negatively on the Scientologists as well. I think I might wear a suit and wear shades. Those dipshits already think the Scientologists are out to get them, so I might as well fuel the fire." I didn't mention it to her then, but I'd like to wear an unnecessary bluetooth, like Shamwow Vince, so it looks like I'm doing something that I'm not to those with below average intelligence. It would give me a further excuse to do something exceptionally stupid if in fact the television cameras showed up--I could take my sign protesting the first amendment and chuck it over my shoulder and say something like, "I'm throwing my Saturday away." At least I'd get a kick out of it.

"That's very creative. You should do something with your life that's creative, don't you think?"

"Well, creative doesn't necessarily equate with anything that's interesting to most people. For example, right now I'm working on a screenplay, but I'm not sure there's any market for it. I'd say it's an uphill climb."

"What's it about?" she was showing more patience with me than she really should at this point.

"It's about a man who becomes fascinated with toast."

A pause. She then spelled, "T-O-A-S-T?"

"Toast."

"Toast." Another pause on both ends.

"You'd be surprised how many ways toast can affect your day."

"I had some toast this afternoon," she said.

"How was it?" I asked.

"It was good."

"Can you imagine how your day might have went if the toast was bad?"

"I hadn't even considered it, but now I'll probably be on the lookout. See, even this is intriguing to me, just based on that line 'how many ways toast can affect your day.' How much have you written?"

"About 60 pages. But again, we have to go back to the impatience. See, my old workstation ran out of memory right after I got started in earnest on the project, and about the third time that the thing ate up all my work, I got entirely frustrated with the whole effort and I had to put it down for a while. I've got a new PC now, so I guess I'll get back to it someday."

"I'd love to read it. You'll have to get me some of it when you get a chance."

"Yeah, if I have enough patience to finish it. I've got all the main ideas already worked out--I just have to connect all the dots."

We tapered off after that--talking about other unimportant shit that had somehow recently punctuated my existence, and I had to let her go after about an hour. It was far too long to punish a patient woman. This impatience thing might be contagious as it regards me.