Patience, m'boy , patience!

I consider myself to be a one with great amount of patience. I just passed another test today! Wow, what an achievement! My car battery has been giving some trouble for about a month now — every time the car has to be jumpstarted. I, being such a gentleman, don’t want to embarrass others by asking them if I could get a boost from their car. So, I always call the emergency roadside assistance for a jumpstart. It usually takes about a two to three minutes, but I generally have to wait for about 45 minutes for the emergency assistance to arrive. I decided to replace the battery. So, I called the assistance again to get my car started. I waited for about an hour but nobody came by to help me. Then the despatch called me to inform that the responder was stuck on the road because there was an accident on the road and it’d be another 30 minutes before he could arrive. So, I took out a book from my backpack, lay down on the backseat and started reading. It was very cold outside and I could not but open the window every five minutes lest I got suffocated inside. Another 45 minutes passed — no one came by! Then I called back the despatch to know what was going on. She tried to explain everything mumbling jumbling and fumbling, but the calmness in my voice got her settled — I told her I understood that it must be very difficult for the responder to arrive in time because the traffic was so bad. Another hour passed, then Big Joe, the responder came with his huge truck. (He actually signed his name as “Big Joe”). I received in the parking lot. He immediately started explaining why he was late: 1. it being a weekend they were short in number, 2. one of the response truck broke down which had been sent to rescue somebody else, 3. his own car-seat broke — so he had to get it fixed first then he was stuck in the traffic. He was probably expecting a huge outburst from me. I told him it was OK and I was lucky that I had been home. Freaked-out Big Joe came down to ground level  of his anxiety and started working on my car. It did not take more that two minutes to get the car started. I signed the necessary paperwork. Big Joe thanked me for my patience and then took off. After a few minutes I started thinking what I would have done had I not been so occupied with the car:  I could 1. get some research done, 2. finish up one of the computations, 3. cleanup my apartment, 4. cook some nice food, and more importantly 5. do the laundry. Then it started happening: a huge raze begun pouring all over my brain slithering down my spine. I thought like pulling my hair out. Why, for heaven’s sake, did I not ask them to send someone else?  I got so angry that I could burn the whole car with my eyes. I few hours later I found myself waking up from a nap — blissfully oblivious of the day’s episode.

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