The Sentinel, Waiting 210404

      I think about waiting all of the time. I’m sure someone has figured out how much time an average person spends waiting for one thing or another. I wonder if waiting doesn’t come in second place, only behind sleeping.

      Think about time waiting at a doctor’s office, stop lights, department of motor vehicles, school busses, restaurants, check out lines at stores, airports. Those are all time killers and those times seem to last forever. All those things add up over a lifetime. Elderly people spend enormous amounts of time waiting to die in nursing homes. There’s just no way to beat the clock on time spent waiting these days.

      Another thing I think about is all of the time-saving devices we have in these modern days. What do we do with all that time supposedly saved? I don’t have an answer; that time seems to vanish into the ether.

      If we could dial back the clock in time when humans were all hunters and gatherers, they were always busy trying to avoid predators and gather enough food to stay alive. Later there were endless forests to clear for farming and raising domesticated animals. There was little waiting time that I could think of when leading the harsh life those people did.

      One last thing I will question today. Who was the first human that saw a chicken laying an egg out its backside and thought, gee that looks like something tasty to eat?