Waiting

So I am waiting. Dad's in his surgery. Pre-op took like three hours, or more accurately pre-op too like 15 minutes spread out over three hours. I listened to TV, Sportscenter and Law & Order and dad napped. Now he's in the operating room, I have his wallet and his teeth, and I am waiting.

The hospital gave me a pager and will text if there's news or when they are done. Don't tell anyone, but I ran out for food before starting my waiting on my own. Then I stole someone's cat5 cable off their desk so I could use an internet hookup (they had a station, but no cable). Eventually that person showed up at her desk and I had to give the cable back - at which point she produced the loaner cable the desk couldn't find. Maybe I should have randomly rifled through drawers instead of stealing a cable that was actually in use.

So I am waiting. This morning while sitting with Dad I thought about how important it is to learn to wait. I don't think I really learned until I worked for Cirque, so that would be like 29. During Creation they would call us in at the top of the day and we would just sit until they needed something, sometimes for hours. The manager in me spent the first week or so slowly going insane. I imagined these gas pump gauges on every crew member's chest spinning up overtime while we just sat. But I did learn to wait.

I was thinking I should add a waiting exercise to Basic PTM. Maybe come in at the top of class and tell them I'll be right back and that they should just sit quietly and then not come back until the end. In the meantime maybe I could tape them and then we could discuss what they did while they were waiting. Not sure it would have the desired impact. During the curicular review we heard a story about studnets in a music program that were made to sit quietly before doing ear training to sort of clear their aural palette. Apparently at the begining of the course several kids would burst into tears after being forced to sit quietly for 30 minutes.

They will not do well in a hospital waiting room.

At least there's internetm for the moment.