The Waiting Game

            As I began to write this, the first thing that came to my mind was a series of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips.  In this particular series, Calvin uses coupons from cereal boxes to order a propeller beanie, but must wait six to eight weeks for it to be delivered.  Every day he excitedly asks whether it came, and when it hasn’t he remains convinced that tomorrow will be the day.  As time goes on, he becomes more and more desperate, until he is completely fed up with the whole thing.  At the end, he cynically asks whether the beanie had come today, only to be told that, in fact, it had!

            This is, perhaps, the quintessential “waiting for something” stereotype.  When people think about waiting for something, whether it is something being delivered, an event in the future, or what have you, they think it will always be on their mind.  You never forget about it for long, the constant trickle of thought is always there in the back of your mind: Maybe it will come today?  If it doesn’t, definitely tomorrow.  Absolutely no later than the day after that…  And then, whether it comes when you think it will or not, all too often the item itself does not live up to your expectations.  Just as Calvin found out to his great disappointment and anger, propeller beanies do not allow you to fly.

            Today, ordering online plus very fast delivery is pervasive, even expected.  If Calvin had ordered his beanie today he probably would have had to wait no more than a couple weeks.  When I order stuff online, generally it takes only a couple days, maybe up to a week, to be delivered.  However, even if Calvin had received his beanie in this time, would his disappointment with it have been any less?  I don’t think so, as the anticipation would still be deeply rooted in him, even though it would receive less time to fester.  Especially when I was younger, this would happen to me constantly, though usually more with upcoming events than items being delivered.

The trick to dealing with these situations is simple, but difficult: don’t think about it.  It sounds easy, and can be if it’s something insignificant that you don’t look forward to that much.  But if you can manage to get yourself to the point where, when your item arrives, you are legitimately surprised by its arrival, you will almost never be disappointed by it.  I actually achieve something near this state of Zen ignorance more often than not – although that may have something to do with a bad memory, and not merely a strategy for waiting.  By “tricking” myself into not caring about what I really want, I make it very easy to wait almost indefinitely for it.  In fact, I am using this method right now to wait for a Christmas gift that still hasn’t come.

            Because of my clever little mind-hack, I think I am quite good at waiting for things that I really want.  Sometimes this mindset leads me into being surprised by things I’d rather not be surprised by, such as the time a box of bakery treats from New York was left on the porch long enough for squirrels to chew a hole in it, but these instances are far more often superseded by very welcome and enjoyable surprises.  On the whole, I think this purposeful self-deception is quite worth it, and it proves, in this case at least, that ignorance really is bliss.

Do you have helicopter parents?

This seems a little short to me, so any ideas on areas to flesh out or elaborate would be great.  Also, I'm not sure how well the ending works, that could be one of the places I should put more.

            “Why aren’t you doing more ______?  You really should do ______.”  These are some of the lines that my parents use on me constantly.  The blank can be occupied by any number of things running from exercise to schoolwork to extracurriculars.  Even though my parents have always pushed me to go further, however, they never really hovered over me.

For a long time I have felt like my parents are more controlling than they should be, but I am beginning to think that maybe they are actually far less so.  To be completely honest, I can’t really remember much of what my life was like even in recent years, let alone back into earlier childhood.  Fortunately for my bad memory, it seems to me that helicopter parenting only really becomes an issue into teenage years, when a child is actually capable of being independent but is not allowed to be.  And as to those years, I can say that I really did have more independence – at least on average.  My parents’ parenting style, in retrospect, seems as if they left me to my own devices most of the time, but occasionally stepped in to micromanage when they thought I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing or not doing something I should.  A pithy way to say this is that I was allowed to do whatever I wanted – as long as it was also what they wanted.

I never really had a stay-at-home parent.  My dad works full time, and though my mom was home a lot when I was little, she was also doing doctoral work for her PhD.  For several years now even that has ended, as she got a full time job – with an hour commute, no less.  Largely because of this, my brother and I began doing things like making lunches, doing laundry, more and more chores around the house, and getting ourselves to places we might normally get a ride to.  I have almost always had a bike, and I have and still do use that a lot, even though I have my driver’s license now.  Especially after my license, but even well before that, I have in large part been almost entirely independent.  I sometimes feel that if our house was periodically restocked with groceries I would be completely self-sufficient.  In addition, my parents generally have not made the slightest effort to come between me and any issues I have with other people – I almost exclusively deal with these situations myself.  Because of all this, I definitely would not characterize my parents as helicopters, though occasionally they can seem like it.

To be honest, I would use a different term (that I’m making up right now) to describe my parents: jet-engine parents.  Instead of hovering around me, protecting and controlling, they constantly push me to and beyond my limits, always wanting me to do more.  This is, I suppose, a good thing for me no matter how I feel when they do it, and of course not at all like helicopter parenting.  I think perhaps my occasional view of this as negative or overly controlling mainly stems from the raw frustration of being pushed outside of my comfort zone.  In the long run this will be almost purely beneficial, but humans in general are resistant to change, even purportedly good change, and I am certainly no exception to that.  It’s a weakness, yes, but sometimes you just want to sit back and play some video games.