Tuesday, February 20, 2002 7:52 AM
I am no longer a Doctor because I don’t have the patience.
I am trying to learn patience. Trying and patience, right to the point! First, an explication, I live the life of a monk. Up at 4:30 AM, 1/2 hour of guitar position practice, then breakfast, 1/2 hour of piano practice, Blow the Man Down with it's Oom Pah Pah and tricky eighth notes on the odd beat is giving me quite a challenge. Does that tell you the level of my keyboard prowess? Then off to the Bally for about 40 or 45 minutes of torture on the cardio active treadmill and then pressures on my knee, abdomen and other portions of my muscles and organs, a shower and off to well, here I guess, which this morning is the Starbuck's on McKnight Road for my morning romp in my journal. I am fine, I am calm, I am together, I am fit as a fiddle until…..

I leave the Bally, actually, the last few minutes of dressing and paying attention to such galling and time consuming tasks as buttoning my shirt and tying my shoes, putting all my effects and clothing into the appropriate coat pockets and duffle bag sections, way to many zippers and flaps on that thing. I begin my bout with anxiety. I vow to keep it under control. I need only acknowledge the problem, repeat my mantra, and compose my cool self. Practice and monkly virtue. Then I get to the car. My goal, a soothing trip to the North Hills in about half an hour. Never quite happens!

If I put a pressure gauge on my anxiety, it would start to climb and then enter the caution zone at the corner of Coal Hollow and Verona Roads, cross the red line at the Fleming Bridge and ride high into the danger range by the time that I crest Cherry Hill only 20 minutes into my journeyand 20 minutes from my destination.

Anxiety and patience are indirectly proportional. As one rises the other falls. The first thing that causes a precipitous rise in anxiety and a correlated fall in patience is a school bus on the crest of a small hill after the turn on to Verona Road. Okay, I say, with some reason, kids, after all, have to get to school. It has a calming effect on me and I settle back to listen to the invective rage of a morning talk show. The kids get on the bus. We eventually move.

There is a man in a small nondescript automobile of an indistinguishable hue who must be employed at the Longvue Country Club for he mercifully turns in there. He is a slow driver. A VERY SLOW DRIVER! Six times out of ten on my morning trek, I am behind him, because I think the driving forces of the universe are out to teach me a lesson in not only patience but humility. It really doesn’t work! I am contrary. I begin a low throaty mumble which works its way to a scream. I begin calling him all sorts of names that would have been banned from books just a short half a century ago. I exercise my modern literary license frequently. Mercifully, as I have stated after about two miles he does a graceful five miles an hour turn into the country club. I blow my horn repeatedly in recognition of his role in my life. He is just an irritant in an otherwise spoiled and bilious morning. More frequently and fervently I repeat my mantra.

Then comes school bus number two and I am beginning to question educating the young and the talk show host is pointing out that liberal bias is ruining not only the western world but possibly causing a rip in the very fabric of time and space. I quickly punch the FM button and turn to NPR, which has a feature that is broadcast from the Peruvian Andes by a nature trail guide who believes that llama’s chips are the answer to the world food shortage. Definitely, I think, no useful reason for education of the young.

I am passed off to a truck from an appliance company that has a rule that if the truck goes under fifteen miles an hour a bomb will be armed and will go off if the vehicle again rises above that speed, spewing toasters and washing machines and coffee makers all over western PA. The truck finally blows up and I manage to get up to the Highland Park Bridge entrance to Washington Boulevard, where people cannot decide who has the right of way, so we stop to discuss the issue. After a heated debate with fifteen fully stopped adult motor vehicles, I travel on to the Fleming Bridge where an eighteen wheel truck has managed to run its rear wheels up a three foot high concrete sidewalk barrier. The driver, who had a rough evening, couldn’t quite make the turn. He is now scratching his head under a baseball cap that says, “Duh, which way did he go, George?”

Mind you, I am doing pretty well. I even manage to convince a whole passel of drivers at the end of the bridge that it is okay to actually go when there is no one else waiting at any of the three opposing stop signs. My horn makes an eloquent voice as the sun rises. It is school bus number three that has me muttering about birth control. What the hell good does school do them, anyway. They just all end up as stupid drivers.

From then on in I am lost. There is no reasoning with me. I am a total idiot taking out my wrath on all the internal control surfaces of my automobile. Pedestrians shouldn’t be allowed, I natter. And why the hell do we need traffic lights, turn left you @$@$*(&, I bluster. Oh, I must be a sorrowful sight!

I get to Starbucks and I sit and write on my brandy new Compaq iPAQ Pocket PC which it took four different trips back in drive time traffic to CompUSA before I got a proper and working keyboard. The decaf coffee of the day some Decaf Pigmy Mocha Bean from Malaysia mellows me out slightly. I climb back into the driver’s seat and manage to drive the rest of the way to work. Anxious, impatient and babbling irrationally, ready to scream. I need to practice my control a little more! Or maybe I should just become a talk show host.