You must be so patient....

Whenever I tell someone I work with kids with disabilities, this phrase, invariably is what they say.

You must be so patient.

Ha!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

I am probably the least patient of all people I have ever met in my thirty eight plus years on earth.  For real. 

My birth lasted roughly three hours.  I was like...what's everyone waiting for?! Let's get the show on the road already!

I have never liked waiting for much of anything.  Much less for people to do, say, or understand things.

Today, I could feel my impatience brewing like a hot coffee in a percolator.  I had a half hour to spare after my last class today so I took a walk.  I could barely stand the slowness of my own feet.  When I got to school, I felt a strange defeat.  I though about the afternoon ahead: homework, probably playing outside (how can you NOT in this weather), Coen's seventh day of ten in painfully theatrical antibiotic swallowing, bath night, dinner, and bedtime.  Tad wasn't going to be home tonight so I was on my own.  I almost wanted to go to sleep right there in the school hallway. Quite simply, I DIDN'T WANNA!!!!!!

After homework we went outside to play where several children were riding their bikes.  My extremely stubborn daughter refused mostly to ride anything but a ill-fitting tricycle all last year, but this year DANG IT ALL, she's riding her bike! She did want me to get the bike out but then proceeded to be terrified of it. She got on, it wobbled once, and she threw herself to the safety of the sidewalk yelling "IT WOBBLED!"
I tried to explain the natural wobbling of a bike on training wheels but to no avail.  She got on, got off, got on got off and I was about to lose my ever-loving mind.  I felt bad; she was quite upset by it and was just scared.  I know she gets very scared and unsure about new things but it's hard for me to understand.  When it came to bike riding, I scorned my parents, threw myself on my blue Schwinn and taught myself to ride at age six.  I wasn't afraid of much of anything as a kid.  Except for that 1983 Ronnie Milsap song, There's a stranger in my house. It was about, as I later found out in adulthood, a man who suspects his wife of an affair, but I thought there really WAS a stranger in his house and would run, terrified, from my bedroom anytime it came on the radio.  Aside from that though, not much scared me.  My daughter, however, is a creature of initial fears and worries and aprehensions. She always gets herself where she needs to be and does it with bravery and zeal....it's just hard for me to relate to her start out reaction.

Here she is, once she got going.  Just fine.

 So, yeah. I wasn't all that patient. 

This is how I imagine I looked this afternoon.

But you know, my kids are in bed, fed, bathed and antibiotic-ed. And I gave them both my all when I read to them and tucked them in.  And you know, I did my best.  That's all we can do, right?

But patient, I am not.

No siree.  Hurry up and finish this post already!!!