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Patience is a virtue many of us don’t have

I can hear him now. Clear as a bell.

He always said it twice, con mucho gusto in the second iteration — for emphasis, natch.

“I hate to wait. I HATE to wait,” Pop always lamented in a long line or between extended pauses of meal courses at restaurants.

He was really just voicing a basic human irritant. Let’s face it, the earthlings are not the most patient creatures on the third rock, I’m afraid.

Look, if you don’t immediately agree, I’m moving on, you dig?

Now where was I? Oh right, patience.

Indeed, while it is virtuous, it is not the most common characteristic amongst the Homo sapiens sort.

Sure, we try to delude ourselves into betraying our natural detestation of delays. The sunnier set, in fact, has tried to strategically spin the situation. They’ve even come up with about 57 billion trite axioms supposedly supporting a love of cooling our jets. Or is it our heels?

Either way, we’re stretching sincerity with sappy, sham sayings, such as:

l Good things come to those who wait.

Now, whoever said this CLEARLY never ordered disposable gloves online. I mean, I put those in my cart WAY before the ink was dry on STAY-AT-HOME orders. I’m talking the day after St. Paddy’s, a’ight?

Guess when they finally arrived? Um, yesterday. Which would be OK if this adage was true, which it ain’t.

I expected fairly substantial scrubbers, ones that could at least handle a light batch of breakfast dishes. Not only could they not clean a French toast pan, but they couldn’t even get the pulp out of the juice glasses. There they were. all shredded and falling out of a dented, ripped-and-taped-up cardboard box.

Oh, not to mention — but in my whiny state, I will — that they were as flimsy as Carol Baskin’s story about not feeding hubby No. 2 to her big cats for lunch.

Hmpf.

l Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Well, duh. Only the Big Guy can pull maneuvers like that one. You remember, the whole “Let there be light … and evening and morning were the first day” thing and all.

So of course some things are time-consuming, especially the biggies. And if it means getting a trip to the city of my dreams somehow, I can scrimp, save and “hold my horses.”

But the same can’t be said for eight soggy tacos that took almost THREE HOURS to be “quickly” doorstep-dumped, OK? Or two grocery bags peppered with stuff I DID NOT ORDER — and which I had to request three DAYS prior to their inept arrival.

Did I mention the $10 delivery fee?

Grrr.

l Anything worth having is worth waiting for.

I sorta feel like the original utterer of this one ripped off the “Rome” guy. The sentiment’s similar but suggests not settling. Hmm. I guess that’s a twirl I’m willing to take in this particular spin.

Well, for instance, look at Christmas. We wait all year for that marvelous, magical day. And it really is worth all the lost sleep to shop and bake and cook and address cards and deck the, er, everything in sight. And it’s even worth the waiting to get to the best holiday ever.

Listen, I love Christmas, to the point that I’m monitoring Hallmark Channel celebration’s “Christmas in July” 24/7. Let’s just say my DVR is fuller than Santa’s cookie-filled belly in the wee morning hours of Dec. 26, capisce?

What? I hate to wait for Christmas. I HATE to wait for Christmas.

— Kimerer is an impatient Christmas fanatic who’s making Pop proud. Don’t wait to check out her blog www.patricia kimerer.com.

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