I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, home of Too Many People. Since I choose to live in a land of Too Many People, I must contend with long lines everywhere. From the check stand at Lucky’s Grocery Store (so much for the tag line, Three’s a Crowd), to the hand held buzzer/fire work display at Cheesecake Factory (a perfect name for this outfit), to the linear parabolas snaking out of Peet’s Coffee, we here in the Bay Area learn to wait. And wait we must. And I do.
Today, however, I reached the demarcation between patience and insanity.
At least while I am waiting in line at the grocery, the restaurant, or the coffee house, my thoughts are my own. Packaging my impatience into productivity, my brain can travel many pathways while standing in line. Such daydreaming has yielded a host of creative ideas like buying a Labrador Retriever, opening the Mill Creek Academy, and taking up photography.
Today I placed two calls: one to my doctor and one to my vet. In both cases, since I live in the land of Too Many People, my call was placed on hold. A nasally person came onto the line, a woman loaded with testosterone who is tone deaf. A back-up group of musicians whom I have also heard in elevators, joined her. She thanked me profusely for the call and asked for my patience. Then a sneaky joint attack by the drug companies and the doctor’s office, ambushed me in an elegy about osteoporosis. I am already aware of my bone density, Boniva, Fosamex, and the fact that by the time I reach the grave, I will have no more bones: just a jello-y amorphous mass will my body be.
The tape played on and on; my thoughts were no longer my own. I hung up.
Time to call the vet about Dinah’s allergy shots. What a coincidence. The same husky voice retrieved the call. In her usual mode, she thanked me for the call, asked me for patience, reminded me my call would be taken in the order received, and then? A grisly tale, as scary as Edgar Allen Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, unfolded– a tale about heartworm, fleas, and ticks. Should my dear Dinah not receive her monthly heartworm chunk, and when a heartworm-laden mosquito bites her, a knarly, vicious piece of infectious spaghetti will begin to weave and wind itself around her rapidly beating heart; eventually, Dinah will die a painful death, if the ticks and fleas do not feast on her first. I hung up.
Please let our thoughts be our own.
Please go back to symphony music.
Better yet, answer the phone.
