Getting Iggy with it

I was a college student majoring in psychology when I first learned about Id. Defined as the “evil” part of us that is driven by pure instinct, Id was characterized mainly by one trait: A need for Instant Gratification.

I had taken to calling it IG instead. IG gets angry and hits people. IG sees something it likes and takes it. IG is a sociopath: a thief, a murderer, a rapist, a corrupt congressman.

What supposedly separated Men from Animals was that we weren’t all about IG — that a man could have patience. To be fair to animals, they can be patient as well — as those of us with dogs may have noticed. That puts IG beneath animal behavior.

And yet here we are, a world populated — even governed — by

IGGY people I like to call IGIOTS.

If it isn’t some jackass cutting to the front of a queue because he perceives his needs as more important than everyone else’s, it’s some uncouth customer service rep constantly checking the time in the middle of your conversation.

When I am being Iggy I say things like “Hurry up!” and “Let’s go already!” While I don’t often say “Are we there yet?” I do go for the more creative “While we’re young...?”

I chiefly blame technology for making me Iggy. The need to come up with ways to do more in less time has whittled my patience down to a point where anything less than instant just takes too damn long.

Mobile phones. The usefulness has deteriorated into a crutch that hampers my ability to live in the here and now. Phones make the world smaller, so I can deliver my oh-so-important words straight into peoples’ ears the moment I think of them.

That isn’t good enough. Remember the rotary phones? Takes too long. I hated people with a zero in their digits. I also often wondered if I would be hacked to death in my own home by an axe-wielding burglar because the emergency hotline people were myopic and included a “9” in the number I had to dial.

To fix all that, the touch-tone was invented. And then speed dialing. And then voice-activation. I can now program my phone so that all I have to do is grunt into it.

“Mmmh,” and then my mother will pick up.

To me, the worst use of my mobile phone is when I check on the whereabouts of somebody who is already on the way to meet me. I can be so Iggy that I don’t realize how constantly checking on your updated arrival status does not make you go any faster. If anything it has the opposite effect.

High-speed Internet. I used to be happy with dial-up. (Can you imagine dial-up using a rotary phone?) I used to doze off to the sweet sound of that electronic hee-haw.

These days, if my Mac starts beachballing for more than five seconds, I will seriously consider replacing it.

LouisCK’s Super Secret Law of Lousy Internet Connections:  “Would you give it a second? It’s going to space!”

I am now the spoiled brat who fails to marvel at the wonder of this amazing magical technology. Come on!  If it takes a whole minute for me to view a photograph of you from 5,000 miles away, that’s still a good deal!

Work pressure. Few people can be as Iggy as the office boss.  He who wants whatever it is he wants “right now” — or even “yesterday.” Whether he wants a report of last year’s toothpick usage, or his intern to hide under his desk, this man exercises igiotic behavior “like a boss.”

This is not strictly an office phenomenon either. Iggy schoolteachers have given me homework that “will only take about an hour” and “is due tomorrow.” Does it matter that five other teachers gave me the same speech? These teachers inspired me to plagiarize.

I continue to blame technology for creating the unreasonable expectations that make people Iggy: “They can put a man on the moon, surely you can photocopy three complete sets of Encyclopedia Britannica before my coffee gets cold!”

Motorized transportation. Walking used to work, but it is now too much of a drag. Not when I can get to go where I want to go sitting in a comfortable chair that magically moves at least twice as fast. As fast as a trotting horse, if I am lucky.

But of course, that is not good enough. So says the Iggy driver honking at me because I moved the car a full second after the light had turned green. Jesus Christ, a full second!

My default response to being honked at is to step on the brake.  The next impulse is to get out of the car so that I can walk over to the honking Igiot and politely ask how I can help him.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were honking at me because you had something important to say. I’ll just get back in my car now and we can… Oh dear me, the light has changed, I guess we’re not going anywhere for at least another 45 seconds. I do hope your office building is still standing when you get there.”

Whether I am in a queue, at a rendezvous, by the phone, or on the brink of an event that will change my life forever, I’d like to believe that waiting ought to be embraced as a pocket of time that provides me with an unexpected chance to be enriched — even those 45 seconds waiting for the light to turn green. But technology and the promise of omnipresence has gotten me to forget where I am. Hating waiting is a result of my failure to recognize that I can choose to enjoy a situation.

Can I really live a life where my recurring wish is for things to be over with? Sounds Iggy to me.