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A friend of mine once saw a bumper sticker in Florida that read "When I get old I’m moving north and driving slow." If patience is a virtue and if virtue is a path to glory, I‘m as good as fried.

I am less than humored by the investment gurus who have told me it may be "painful" to watch my account value decline from time to time. How about declining from time to time for five years, you morons! If I ever get ahold of ya’, I’ll show you painful! I know they said that if I’m patient and stick with a disciplined long-term strategy, I may make that money back, and then some. Well, so far, I’m looking at a retirement of picking up cans on the side of the highway or at a second career as a greeter at Wal-Mart!

My wife is sometimes reluctant to go grocery shopping with me. I understand that people don’t always mean to be rude by leaving their carts in the middle of the aisle where you can’t get by. I’ve been there; they’re just in awe over the vast selection of coffees, pastas or cream of anything soups offered now-a-days or by the many different ways that beef can be prepared and frozen. But, I’m convinced others get in your way for spite. They see you coming and turn their heads and act like they’re reading a label or studying a coupon…like they’re some sort of super market divas…big wigs in the Pig! Those carts I ram. If I’m invisible, they’re invisible.

We’ve all heard, "All good things come to those who wait." Have you ever been in a hurry to go somewhere and the people you live with won’t come on and get in the car? Ever tried leaving them? It works. Go by yourself a few times. Preparedness time in the ladies’ room can be, at a minimum, cut in half. After a while, they usually don’t want to go at all.

Impatient people generally know that they suffer from impatience. Some people are lucky enough to only suffer from impatience when their impatience triggers have been pulled. I’m one of the "lucky" ones.

Another brainiac, with more time on his hands than I have, said, "The wise man is aware that if he doesn’t have patience, panicking and impatience will not help him regain missed opportunities, and will not take away things he dislikes." I have never, in my life, pretended to be wise. This brings me to patience while driving…

Traffic

I had an important meeting a two-hour drive away from where I work. I was, of course, just about to run out to my car when my boss called me into his office to go over a few things that he deemed important (life’s lessons as told through parables, sports analogies and war stories).

Now, instead of having surplus time in which to get to my destination, there was a deficit. I

I managed to get motor oil on my freshly pressed white shirt and had to iron another… I didn’t have time to pick up the laundry the evening before because I was preparing for the meeting that I was getting closer to being late for. I thought, "I’m gonna make it. I’m on the road headed toward the interstate. If I speed up just a little I still have time. Blue lights. Fifteen minutes later and $110 poorer, I’m finally on the interstate. It seemed that as soon as I set my cruise control button every steel laden truck in the United States decided to go south to Birmingham.

To do this, they each had to pass all two million snowbird RVs who suddenly appeared out of nowhere from north of the Mason Dixon. The drivers of these big trucks have some sort of code somewhere that says they can only pass going up hill. I had absolutely no control over how fast I could go.

It would have been a good time for a hood-mounted Howitzer. I had run out of real words and had begun making up profanities. "Remember the road rage seminar," I told myself. "Go to a happy place. Whatever is decreed cannot be prevented from happening, and whatever is decreed not to happen cannot be made to happen." Right! That must mean that if a chicken truck can turn over entering the interstate, it will and did.

Three hours into what should have been an hour drive, another clever saying pops into mind that only your mamma would say and get away with, "If things had gone as planned, it could have been you in that accident."

No, it was a chicken truck that turned over, no one, other than a few fryers-to-be, got hurt. If things had gone as planned, I wouldn’t have walked into the meeting hoarse, bug-eyed and with a nervous tick!

You know what they say, whoever "they" are, "With patience, my friend, you’ll live longer." I ain’t gonna make it.