I think I’m a patient person.

Hold on. My husband, Mark, just read that sentence and he can’t stop laughing. It’s distracting me, and I can’t write. Okay, that’s enough laughing, Mark. Stop it. Really. Stop, NOW.

As I was saying, I’m super patient. Really. Incompetence bothers me, so I don’t love waiting around an extra long time due to ineptitude. If something genuinely takes time, however, I’m good with it. Have you ever rushed Julia Child’s beef bourguignon? It’s a travesty. Or so I’ve heard. Fine, I’ve never made beef bourguignon. It takes so long.

I try to model this exceptional patience to my children. I want them to know that the world doesn’t revolve around them. It revolves around me. No, that’s not right. I mean to say, putting others first is more important than our own immediate gratification. Good things come to those who wait, and all that.

This is not an easy lesson for any of us. Apparently, Mark thinks I’m still working on it. Excuse any typos; I can’t think, because he’s still standing behind me, reading over my shoulder and snort-laughing.

My kids are doing okay in the patience department. Mostly. We’re still working on not having urgent requests when I’m on the phone.

This was over a year ago, but could have easily been yesterday. Or five minutes ago.

In general, however, they’re learning. I say a lot of things along these lines, all of them met with grudging acceptance:

The plane can’t take off just because you want it to. There’s an order to these things, and the pilot waits his turn so we don’t die.

No, I can’t just drop the hammer and race through this stoplight. I have to wait my turn.

Well, I know you really want to ride that roller coaster, but so do the 732 people in front of us. (Yes, we vacationed at Disney this year. Talk about a lesson in patience.)

There is one time, however, that a gentle reminder to practice patience, or as I like to say, Put on Your Patience Pants Right This Very Second, Young Man, doesn’t work. That time? Meal time.

Both of my kids want to eat when they want to eat, which is always. (That’s a whole different post on the question of how people afford to feed teenagers.) My third grader, however, is never hungry. He’s hangry. He is fine one second and threatening to pass out from hunger the next.

I’m failing to meet a key parenting responsibility, the one in which we agree to raise decent humans who know how to function in the world. I’m failing, because I can’t seem to teach this otherwise bright kid how food works. Somehow we’ve mislead him; he believes food prep is akin to magic.

The kid thinks that all he has to do is announce, “When we get to the eating establishment, I will have a cheeseburger with tomatoes, and nothing else. Just cheese, meat, tomato, bun. I will have a side of fruit, or french fries if you let me. I will drink a Sprite.”

Two side notes here. One, this child is mildly obsessed with The Cosby Show right now, so go back and read the last quote in your best Bill Cosby. Two, my son also thinks he’s a Jedi master, and tries the Sprite thing daily. He rarely asks if he can have one of the cans-o-sugar. Instead, he announces that he will have a Sprite. His Jedi skills only work on the special-est of occasions, but a kid’s gotta try.

Back to ordering food. Declaring his order to nobody in particular, in my child’s mind, should result in the immediate delivery of a cheeseburger. Poof! Dinner is served! Prep time and cooking time make him weepy. Seriously. With watery eyes, he plaintively cries, “When is our food going to get here?” I don’t know, dude, maybe after they kill the e.coli by COOKING THE MEAT.

No matter how we explain this to him, no matter how we reason with him, no matter how much pleading we do, he can’t seem to hold it together when he’s hungry.

It’s no different at home. “What are we having for dinner?” really means, “Hey, why is there no food in front of me?! I’m DYING of hunger.”

I regularly wonder if there’s a strange force at play that warps my words when I speak.

I say: “I’m making dinner right now. It will be ready in about 10 minutes.”

They hear: “I have planted the vegetables, so your salad should be ready in about three months. I’m not sure if we’re going to have meat this year, though, because I haven’t managed to start raising livestock.”

I’ve been there, of course. I’ve been taking care of life, checking things off my list, when I realize I’m woozy and need food. Immediately. I understand feeling peckish. But you know what I do? I obtain food, with the understanding that my food choice will impact the overall time between need food and have food.

We’re a blessed people, a people who have never gone hungry. My kids have never missed a meal. They get three squares a day and one or two snacks. They are offered balanced, organic choices (most of the time), and occasionally they even Jedi-up themselves a treat, like Sprite.

It all leaves me to wonder…

:: Why, why, why the drama when hunger strikes?
:: From where does this impatience stem? Any thoughts?