In a Word . . . Waiting

It is late evening. The rain falls as though suddenly discovering an almighty passion for earth. And the wind howls with the wail-full rage of a rejected lover.

You are next in line at the ATM machine. As open to wind and rain as Lear on the heath. You do not feel like delivering a soliloquy.

You have to use all your restraint not to “strike flat the thick rotundity” of the impossible but hefty man at the machine before you, its keyboard towards his busy hand.

It seems he has already punched in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and now appears to have begun on Joyce's Ulysses. Or is it Finnegans Wake?

Is that the fifth credit card he has held before him?

Should I eat a peach? Wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled? Disturb the universe, tap him on the shoulder and say, “for Jaysus’ sake, there are other people waiting here”? Then he is gone with a grunt, a confetti of silent expletives thrown in his wake. Lost in the weeping wind.

Or the lady at the checkout with the purse in a bag, in her shopping bag, at the bottom of her supermarket trolley.

You just wanted the forgotten Parmensan shavings for the Bolognese. It is simmering on the cooker as you rush out cursing yet another sign of early onset dementia.

You left spaghetti boiling too, confident you’d be back in a minute. Foolish you! You did not imagine the lady with the purse in a bag, in a bag, in the trolley. She counts out the notes, ONE by ONE, and the coins ONE by ONE, before stopping to ask the checkout girl “…did you say 38 cents or 28 cents?”

To which the always-fed-up checkout girl responds tersely: “….28 CENT!”

By now the Bolognese has overflown and set the cooker on fire. The boiling spaghetti is all over the floor. There may have been an explosion as the fire spread. The house is in flames.

Six units of the fire brigade are outside and soon what hasn’t gone up in smoke is destroyed by water. And through it all she calmly grasps for another 10 cent in her suddenly cavernous purse.

I just hate waiting.

Waiting, to remain in a state of repose. From early Middle English waiten, Anglo French waitier.

[ inaword@irishtimes.com ]