WHY IS EVERYTHING SO SLOW?

By Lisa Harmon

Here I am in New York City complaining about how slow everything is.  I am clearly doomed.  This is New York, it just doesn’t get any faster than this!

I learned this painful lesson on a trip to San Francisco as a teenager.  Ah sunny California – how relaxing.  Sure, its relaxing.  Till the first time you find out that you’re going to stand on line longer than you ever thought possible, even though there are hardly any people on the line!  Furthermore, you are not permitted to make a face about it.  That is the worst part!  All the locals are cool and relaxed – so if you get too annoyed you look like an uptight east-coast jerk!  I admit I feel a little embarrassed when they see the smoke coming from my nostrils.  Its their own fault.  Why don’t they pick up the pace!?!?!

And everyplace is slower than here…Like upstate New York, or down south.  The people are friendly and oh so maddeningly slow!

You

All

Have

A

Nice

Day

Now.

Ya hear?

I think she’s starting another sentence, get in the car, get in the car!

So what could possibly be slowing me down, here in this nirvana of savvy, busy, gym-going movers and shakers? 

Let’s see.  Cats.  Every step I’ve taken inside the house is behind a pain in the ass cat.  I walk fast – because I’m from New York!  New Yorkers don’t just walk.  It’s like a sporting event for us…we speed up, we slow down, we dart between, scooch around, sneak by, duck under, hurdle and may even elbow our opponents on occasion.  We make better time than the cabs.  I “walk” like this all day long!

I get home, its another story.  Whenever I take a step, a cat takes a much tinier step in front of me.  It takes thirteen minutes to get from the living room to the kitchen, which is eleven feet.

I’ve learned that in thirteen minutes you get the urge to drop-kick a cat twenty-six times.

And my laptop.  I just want to look up the address of the hotel in Florida.   Click.  Connection error; Retry.  “You always make a connection error four times, then like a miracle you somehow manage to connect!  Can you just do it the first time for once!  Just for once!  Oh my God!  Why must this take 28 minutes!  Please could you hurry…oh God waiting for response from hotmail.com!  Forget hotmail!  Let’s go straight to Google!  Oh God!  Its frozen!  Oh! My! God!  Why does this simple thing have to take 43 minutes!  I’m going to smash you with a hammer!  Oh my God I hate this computer!”

Online banking, reading the news, answering emails, Facebook and Twitter – each damn page takes three long minutes to load, and that’s how two hours have gone by just so I could look up the address of the hotel in Florida!  Oh and that’s not counting puppy and kitten videos!  It’s a trap!  They’re only a few minutes each, but once you start, you can’t stop – worse than potato chips!   Do not click the puppy videos!  Do not click on them!

Waiting on lines also seems to take longer than ever these days!  They have those self-checkout machines now.  Just as slow and annoying as their human predecessors.  But I do love the voices on those things.  PLEASE SCAN YOUR NEXT ITEM!  Why are you yelling?  I’m standing right here!  I think the people who live across from the supermarket must go insane with that voice.  PLEASE MOVE YOUR….BANANAS!....TO THE BAGGING AREA.  Could it be any louder?  She seems so excited about the bananas.  Like finally, one of you fat fucks bought a piece of fruit.  Ok it’s a banana, but still!  And by the way, self-checkout lady voice, I’m 45 so anywhere I happen to stand is a bagging area!  Everything’s getting baggier as you speak, I mean, holler.

So that’s it, the day is over.  I did four things.  Now its bedtime.  What!  Yes, its bedtime because of all you slowpokes getting in my way all day long!

What a waste of all my talent and natural charisma!

Really what am I in such a rush about, anyhow?  What exactly is my problem?  Well, I’m a New Yorker, and that’s just the way we roll.