By Roberta Durra
“Impatience”, I shall call it by its proper name, has dogged me since childhood and til’ this day continues to be my steady sidekick. It sabotages many a meal in my kitchen, and wreaks havoc on all kinds of projects. Patience, on the other hand, is very much like my middle name…the name I never use, forget I have, but is there if needed for legal reasons.
If you think I’m kidding about being impatient…allow me to enlighten you.
I have washed so many wool sweaters in the washing machine, rather than taking time to hand wash, that my niece has an entire shrunken winter wardrobe for her Barbie doll.


I remember feeling impatient at 8 years of age while playing with a toy called Creepy Crawlers. It had molds of bug-like creatures, into which plastic goop was poured before being heated on an electric hot plate. The idea was to cook, cool, and then carefully remove your creepy crawly bugs with the provided tweezers. I was barely able to make myself wait 15 minutes to cook my crawlers, and completely incapable of waiting 10 minutes to cool them. The tweezers were awkward, so I got some pretty gnarly burns on my fingers pulling out freshly cooked crawlers. Is there a statute of limitations on bug burns, MATTEL?
At the same time, my cousin had a really cool cotton candy machine. The trouble with that toy was you had to wait until the sugar was fully whipped by the machine and turned in to cotton. If you couldn’t wait for the machine to stop, like a “friend” of mine couldn’t, you’d get stung on your forearms with pellets of sugar. You can imagine that Band Aids on my fingers from Mattel, along with red rashes on my arms from sugar pellets, gave me a very attractive 3rd grade look.
Funny…or is it, that even now, at this writing, my forearms are sporting 3 burns received during the preparation of 3 recent meals.
If you’re not yet convinced I have a slight issue with patience, the list goes on…
When I do wear nail polish, it has tread marks on it from touching too early to see if it’s dry.
Put up wallpaper with me and after 45 minutes I will say, “You do it”, and let you finish the job alone.
It’s not easy walking this impatient path. Why can’t I be more like Arnold Schwarzenegger? He waited 13 years to tell Maria about his illegitimate child. He is nothing if not a patient man.



At this point in my life, I can honesty say that I have the patience of a baby gnat, combined with the wisdom of a mother gnat who says “Slow down, baby gnat. You’ll do better if you take a little more time with things”. I know better than to rush, and yet…
I’m still the person who opens the oven door for a quick peek when I know perfectly well this will sink my soufflé.
Now WAIT just a darn minute.
ReplyDeleteI think I bought that partially embroidered jacket at a yard sale once. A real relic, it was.
Of course I want souffle now. I CAN'T WAIT. Power of suggestion...it gets me every time..especially when it comes to scrumptious sounding food items.
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