In a Hurry? Or No Particular Place To Go?

I’ve noticed that many people are either almost always in a hurry or compulsive dawdlers. For people on both ends of this spectrum, there is rarely a happy medium.

The first type lives as if someone is following them around with a stopwatch. Everything must be done as fast as they can possibly do it. Cook fast, eat fast, shower fast, work fast, fuck fast, and so on. It’s as if they never heard the expression “haste makes waste”.

Nowhere is this trait more prevalent than when such people get behind the wheel of a car. There is an unwritten assumption that one must always drive as fast as they can get away with, regardless of whether they have to be anywhere at any particular time and even if they’re not running late. These are the folks who will tailgate even those cars driving at 20 miles over the limit, will swerve around you only to turn right at the very next intersection, and will drive as fast as they can to the next traffic light, even if it just turned red.

I’m guessing that an underlying reason for this mindset is that to take one’s time doing things is to be lazy and, especially in the case of driving, that it’s not “cool” to simply drive along at a moderate speed. Don’t get me wrong, I like to take my car on the interstate and put it through its paces, but I don’t have to always drive it as fast as I can get away with. I figure we’re all going to be in the cemetery soon enough, so why hurry towards it?

The other type, the dawdler -- whose car always seems to be in front, by the way -- can be equally annoying. These are the people who pick at their food, pushing it around on the plate long after everyone else has gotten up to do something else. These are the people who have to try on 900 outfits, while everyone else waits and waits and waits to leave for the movie. Dawdlers block every grocery aisle, oblivious to others wanting to get by.

They are the ones who drag their feet walking smack in the middle of the road in the middle of the night, who won’t pick up the pace and get out of the way when a car wants to pass. They just look at you with that deer caught in the headlights expression, put out at the effrontery of a car actually wanting to use the road.

I don’t know which type is worse; the speed freaks or those living life seemingly in a coma. Mostly, I want to take things at a moderate pace, speeding up or slowing down as appropriate, without being prodded or hindered by those who want to live at a different pace.

Thoughts?