What's Your Hurry, Honey?

When I was a preteen, my older cousin told me a dirty joke that has stayed with me ever since. It went something like this:

After making routine initial flight announcements, an airline pilot forgot to turn off the plane’s PA system. All passengers thus heard him when he blithely told his co-pilot: “I am going to [relieve myself] and then get it on with the stewardess.”

Horrified and in complete panic, the stewardess hightailed it from the back of the plane, rushing to tell the pilot of his tremendous gaffe. An old woman’s leg protruded in the aisle, and the stewardess tripped on it. 

Making eye contact, the senior citizen sought to comfort the stewardess: “What’s your hurry, honey? He has to [relieve himself] first!”

When I am out doing errands, I am preternaturally in a rush. Grocery shopping brings out this tendency in extremis. Nothing sets me off more than a long grocery line or a chatty customer at the butcher counter, oblivious to the others in the queue. 

But a voice in my head is imploring, “What’s your hurry, honey?” I do not have a good answer to this question. 

I am retired. It is not as if I am cramming my grocery shopping into a day packed with work and putting food on the table for a family of five by a certain hour. If I manage to beat the next customer to the checkout line or get out of the parking lot half a minute faster than the next guy, so what? 

But I rush, nonetheless. 

All of this rushing may be a symptom of a malady known as “hurry sickness,” a “pressing need to hurry through tasks and make the most of every moment.” Hurry sickness takes both an emotional and physical toll on the hurrier. It can lead to generalized anxiety, trouble sleeping, headaches, and decreased immune health.

I do not need to sprint through the grocery store. From now on, I will slow down and be in the moment when selecting produce. I might even try to be cheerful about waiting in the checkout line.

The stewardess in the old joke was no doubt mortified by the pilot’s public announcement. It is unknown whether she proceeded in her tryst with the pilot despite the embarrassment. But hopefully, her stumble taught her that rushing, even at thirty thousand feet, ultimately leads to delays. 

 

--

Sign up here to have Vertes'Verities delivered to your inbox every Thursday morning. Or, you can recommend Vertes'Verities to a friend.