Bob Batz

Some people are destined to go through life slowly.

What I mean is those people spend most of their lives waiting for this or that.

I’m one of them.

Any day now...

Every time I go into a grocery store, for example, I get in line behind someone who is there to buy $345 worth of lunch meat. To make things worse, that someone always wants the lunch meat custom sliced.

“I’d like the garlic bologna in one-eighth inch slices, the boiled ham in one-quarter-inch slices and the pickle loaf in three-eighth-inch slices,” the shopper tells the guy or gal behind the meat counter.

Invariably, as soon as the meat counter employee starts the slicer, the machine groans, creaks, emits a noxious cloud of black smoke and stops.

That’s when the store employee says, “Aw, gee, I’m so sorry, our slicer is broken. If you can wait I’ll call and get a repairman out here. The nearest one is in Boise, Idaho.”

And nine times out of ten the guy in front of me says “OK, I’ll wait.”

The same kind of thing happens to me at the bank.

I always try to find a window where there is only one person ahead of me. But then I discover that one person has a bag of checks to be deposited or a paper bag filled with 3,546 pennies he wants to cash in for fives, tens and twenties.

Like I said, sometimes it seems like all I do is wait.

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My car needs gas, see. I spot a service station where there are no customers. Quickly, I turn off the highway. But, alas, before I can get to a gas pump there are 23 other motorists in line. I haven’t the foggiest idea where all those cars come from. Maybe it’s magic or something.

Waiting is a very important facet of life in America.

Not even sick people can avoid waiting because when you get sick you have to go see a doctor and every doctor’s office has a “waiting room” so you wait.

People wait everywhere. They wait in restaurants and department stores and hardware stores and movie theaters.

If I call a business person, there’s a good chance a secretary will tell me “You’ll have to wait because Mr. Brown is on another line.”

I have a friend who tells a great story about the time he drove 80-miles-an hour to the hospital when his wife was in labor with their first child.

But when they got to the crowded emergency department, a nurse told him “Please have a seat. A doctor will be with you in a minute.”

But my friend’s wife had the last laugh.

She had the baby in the waiting room.

Contact Bob at bbatz@woh.rr.com

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