Just Wait

3/4/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Just Wait

Kids are wired for instant gratification, so one of the most irritating phrases I heard as a kid was, “Just wait.” I heard it a lot, in variations that inspired uneasiness, impatience, or dread.

“Just you wait…” Somehow you knew that whatever you were waiting for wouldn’t be good.

“Just wait a minute,” probably meant quite a bit longer than a minute; perhaps even never, if the adult got distracted.

Sometimes they left off “just,” which was even more alarming. “Wait till your father hears about this!” Experience told you exactly what you were waiting to get. But a milder warning that my parents used frustrated me even more.

“Your time’s coming.” This might occasionally be substituted for “Just you wait,” but most often it simply meant I wasn’t old enough to participate in an activity.

“You’d get too tired riding to the south pasture. Your time’s coming.”

“You’re too young for makeup; your time’s coming.”

“You’ll understand when your own daughter wants to do that. Your time’s coming.”

The most maddening thing was that deep down you knew they were right, and sure enough, my time always arrived.

Today, I have mixed feelings about that. I’m summer’s child, so getting through the season of short sun becomes more bearable when I tell myself that my time is coming. A chinook, or sighting the first robin, enhances the anticipation, even when the next day brings a whiteout. I’ve managed to drag myself out of bed in the dark for months now, knowing that as days lengthen it won’t be necessary to turn on lights to find my clothes. And then, turning over the calendar, I note that promise is soon to be broken. Daylight Savings Time looms.

Golfers have been waiting for this. Your time is now. Ditto for fishermen; my daughter in law who trains for marathons, and ranchers behind with pairing out. And I’ll get on board eventually, when it gets warm enough to sit on the porch at sundown, walk in the meadow, and dig in the flowerbed.

But right now, I’m frustrated with this semi-annual silliness. Whoever’s in charge of stupid has decided that waiting for things to happen in order isn’t valid anymore; that cutting off one end of the day and adding it to the other end really makes more time. What it makes is tired; for kids who refuse to go to sleep while the sun’s up, for parents who have to fight them about it, for folks in ag who’ll work until long past what used to be bedtime because it’s too wet to do field work much before noon.

Just wait. We’ll get used to it, like we always do. And about the time we do, the time will change back. Sure as sunrise, that time is coming, and just as surely, some of us will be complaining again. Come to think of it, maybe I really never grew up.