Gripe # 2 – Waiting on other people.
Growing up, my father used to pick me up from school every day. A lot of people hear this and think it to be a luxury; and it was, except for the fact that from the time I started Kindergarten at 4 years old up until I had left high school, my father almost always picked my up late.
Now when I say late, I don’t mean late enough to have a little more time to play/hang out with friends. Oh no, I mean late enough to watch all those friends go home and be the only one left at school. Not looking like a luxury now is it?
In looking at my present state of being, I realize that I blame a lot of my present condition on things that happened to me as a child. Which from a psychological perspective is perfectly normal, except that I can’t get past them. Such is the case with this.
For a child, an only child at that, having school end at 2 o’ clock and be there all alone until 6 pm almost every day can be quite traumatizing.
Once when I was about 6 or 7, I saw a car which looked like my dad’s – a red Isuzu Gemini pull into the school. As it was pretty early and unexpected, my childish excitement kicked in; I told all my friends goodbye and dashed to the car taking my place in the back seat. Imagine my surprise when a lady (with a very low haircut) turned to me from the passenger seat. Suffice to say, I probably exited the car much faster than I entered. My friends found it absolutely hilarious.
Of all my late pickup experiences, however that’s the only one I can laugh at. All the others aren’t so funny. A couple of years later at 8 or 9 years old, I remember having to wait so long for my father, that the guard who lived on the school property with his family had to take me in to his house and feed me. That’s right, feed me like some homeless dog found on the roadside. Sometimes I got so hungry, I had to go through lunch boxes which kids had forgotten, hoping to find some snack they hadn’t eaten or scour the sandlot hoping to find some coins that had fallen from kids playing on the jungle gym.
In high school, it didn’t get any better. I could have taken the bus, but my parents didn’t want me to. Funny though, how in second form (eighth grade)they used it as punishment for having bad grades and I ended taking it for a whole term. Once though, my dad picked me up at 7:25 pm. Night had fallen and though I wasn’t a child anymore it still hurt. I’m pretty sure I cried my eyes out that night - after all no-one want to be forgotten.
To this day, at 25 years old living under my parents roof, I have sat for hours just waiting for them to be “ready” so I can leave. When I was younger, my dad worked 15 minutes from my school. Now, he works right across the street from my office and nothing has changed. The worst part, if he’s in a rush and he has to wait on me for a minute, it’s a problem.
So there, the source of my peeve. That my friends, is why I can’t stand waiting on other people.
Rant out.
