Let’s face it – Americans don’t like to wait for anything. In recent weeks, we’re finding out just how poorly we’re dealing with the whole “stay home and wait out the pandemic” thing. Students at the University of New Hampshire held a large party in a fraternity house. The disease spreads rapidly. A sports team at a local high school, unnamed and unspecified because we really want to protect the privacy of the negligent and stupid, held what is reported in the newspaper as a “social gathering” has, surprise, 18 new cases of coronavirus. But really, we’ve waited long enough to party, to have weddings in remote locations like central Maine, where at this point 170 cases have now been reported. And in the latest evidence that God has a sense of humor, a conservative pastor that railed against wearing face masks in his church, inviting everyone in to sit together without masks, was placed in intensive care with COVID-19 this past week. Yes, we don’t learn. Well, maybe a little. Because after a teenage house party in a wealthy suburb north of Boston, the teenage host and parents face hefty fines. Maybe that’s the message we need. Or not. They’ll just write a check and plead innocent when the cases of illness start mounting. The experts tell us what is causing these spreads, but we’ll do what we want anyway because . . . . . we’ve been wearing face masks too long. We’ve been social distancing too long. We’ve been at home too long. We’ve waited too long for the pandemic to run its course, and this virus has inconvenienced us too much.
We should have known when the first settlers came to North America from Europe and the eastern coast wasn’t enough. We pushed westward until the Pacific Ocean got in our way, slowing our progress. “Westward Ho” really meant, “We want more land, and by golly, we’re going to take it.” Maybe some of it comes from our ancestral roots. Our predecessors weren’t satisfied either, until “The Sun Never Set on the British Empire.” Napoleon, Alexander, Hitler, Genghis Khan, all were models of “enough is never enough, and we can’t wait.” Patiently building the Thousand Year Reich was taking too long.
We like things to be quick and easy nowadays. Phone calls and eventually emails were too time consuming, so voila – the text. Speed it up. Faster is better. Changing channels on the tv was just too much effort, so the remote was born. Now it’s even too much to find something we like, so the tv finds it for us. “Because you watched. . . . . . , you might also like . . . .” Does anyone even know what a squash looks like anymore? Of course not – it comes peeled and diced because it takes too long to do that at home. Pretty soon, you’ll see acres of cubed squash growing in farms across the country. “Instant” coffee was born because brewing a pot took way too long. Even that was too much time and effort, so we use “call ahead” on our coffee app so we don’t have to wait when we get to Starbucks. Fast food was born because, well, “slow” food implied waiting for it to cook. We want it now. Sometimes even waiting while a teenager slaps together a burger slows us down. If we were meant to wait, God would never have given us the microwave.
So, what happened in human development led us to this? Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. They’d stalk wildlife for days, waiting patiently behind trees and bushes for the antelope, which equally patiently would emerge at the riverbank thinking, “I’ll just have a sip – I don’t see anyone around.” Farmers would patiently sow seeds in the spring, knowing that the produce was months away. Here in New England, we will anticipate the arrival of “native” tomatoes because they’re better, but the flip side is that we have those other, regular alien tomatoes in the supermarket year-round.
Perhaps technology has fed impatience into our universal genetic make-up. The development of the assembly line created in us all, and particularly in the big-time money makers, a desire to do things faster. It satisfied our thirst for more, but it also made us want more too. So what if machinery lopped off fingers and hands, we’re getting more stuff made faster. Communication was a major hurdle. Remember reading about war strategies and orders during the War of Independence coming from Britain by boat and taking two months? They were outdated when they got here. How can you fight a proper war that way? So, Mr. Bell and Mr. Morse set out to fix that problem. And now we have it – instant communication except where there’s no reception.
In a rather glaring example of our impatience, you will notice that transportation isn’t exactly what we envisioned. While Europe, Japan, and other parts of the world were developing high-speed public transportation, Americans made a commitment to the highway system. So, while Japanese commuters are zipping from place to place in no time, we’re stuck in traffic on the highway. I know, right? But we’re in our own cars, and not to worry, we’ll use our cells to make the time productive while we recklessly weave in and out of traffic, illegally using the breakdown lane to gain a precious second or two. That’s the spirit. Now we’re saving time. Or perhaps we should just put ourselves into an Amazon box and . . . . . .
Here’s another example of America’s steadfast impatience. One day delivery. “Five to seven business days” is a thing of the past, except for toilet paper and sanitary wipes. Everything else can be ordered on line and delivered in minutes. It’s got to the point where I forget what I ordered, so I have to check the front porch each day to see if anything’s out there. I lean over and peek out the kitchen window. Sometimes, they deliver things to the back door, which throws me all off. I’d even look at the delivery dates to see which items would come the fastest. Cheaper sometimes doesn’t matter. That one can come on Thursday, while this other one won’t be here until next week. Next week is the new “unacceptable”. Who can wait a week? Our kitchen faucet broke off in my hand the other day. I have no idea how that happened. It’s metal and should last forever, but no . . . . I went across the street to the hardware store and picked up a new one. Then I called the plumber because, well, I’m not terribly handy with things like that. My skill set plays more to watching someone else do it. In a pleasant surprise, the plumber could come the next morning to install it. Great. So, twenty-four hours and hundreds of dollars later, we’re back in business. But I’ll happily pay that to have it working again quickly.
Welcome to the new era of instant. Instagram, instant messaging, instant breakfast, instant oatmeal, instant jello. All the really important stuff is immediate. “Call ahead”, banking apps, because using the ATM takes too long, and waiting for that drawer at the drive-up window to come out so we can put stuff in it, well . . . ., who in the world has the time for that? We don’t watch television in real time because then we’d have to sit through the commercials. On demand” is better still, as the commercials don’t even exist there. These days, we “stream” our lives because it seems like it’s moving continuously so we don’t waste time. We can’t wait for our lives to return to normal in a health crisis, we’ll just bring back normality and whatever happens, happens. We can’t let oatmeal or picking up a latte stand in the way of our valuable use of time and productivity. We need to be busy, busy, so that we have more time to kick back and relax – that’s what everyone on House Hunters is looking to do – and forget about how busy we’ve been.
Speed – that’s the ticket.
I'm Thinking...No! 