Impatience

We are an impatient, easily aggravated species. The tiniest hiccup in our day can send us spiraling into despair or anger. A misunderstanding, a misplaced hello, an unaccepted invitation...all can make the world seem bent on our destruction, especially on the days we forget to bring enough change for the coke machine. Aggravation is so rarely logical.

I voted today. Just barely. I drove to the school where I normally vote as I imagined myself stopping for all of 5 minutes on my way to work. Of course, things never end up how I imagine them. I managed to arrive at the same time every criminally insane and/or slow person decided to vote and/or pick up their child. At one point the one-way street next to the school suffered a jam as people decided to park on both sides and then people decided "one way" just meant "pick whatever way you like" and tried to squeeze their hummers and let-me-suck-all-the-oxygen-out-of-your-personal-air-space SUV monstrosities into parking spaces that wouldn't fit a tricycle.

After excavating myself from the jam I wanted to give up. To hell with Karen Carter and Louisiana's only hope for sane representation. To hell with democracy. But then I noticed that half the cars that had been stuck in front of me, cars that had sat idle longer than me, were pulling over, parking on the burb, sidling up to the side of trailers. People got out with their driver's license in hand, scowls of impatience and annoyance on their faces (mirroring mine I bet), and skulked into that building.

I skulked in, too.

Nobody talks in those voting rooms, nobody even smiles. We all have places to go, people to love, cars to unpark, annoyances to get over. It struck me that everyone in that room had a viable reason for skipping the voting booth today. Traffic's too bad, Louisiana doesn't even matter (doomed red state), rush hour's coming on, dinner will get cold. But even impatience can take a back seat some days for bigger, hopefully better, things.