"I attempted to talk to you after class but you left so fast I didn’t even see you leave!"
That was in an email from a student. I tell ya, I might seem slow in many ways, but I am not always slow. I am sometimes faster than a speeding rocket! ;)
Ah, who am I kidding! I am one hell of a slow guy. I don't like doing too many things. I leave the rushing around to others.
When others rush around, I even attempt to ask them why they are rushing. But, they are gone even before I get the sentence out of my mouth ;)
Increasingly though I worry that this world is not made for us slow coaches. People do not have patience for us anymore.
Even in talking. The young talk a million words a minute and I imagine they see the world in ultra slow motion whenever I start speaking!
Take, for instance, that taxi driver in Costa Rica whose speed in driving and talking fascinated me. She would perhaps join the people in America who find my driving and talking to be annoyingly slow.
But then there are places where people are even slower than I am. It is not easy to figure who the tortoises of world are!
I suspect that the Aesops of the world spun stories like the hare and the tortoise only because more often that not, the storytellers were slow people like me. After all, it takes time to tell stories. The storyteller can't merely say, "there was a young woman named Cinderella, who was horribly ill treated by her stepmother. But, don't worry, it ended well." What kind of a story is that, right? It takes time to set up the story. It takes time to listen to the story. Which is why I think Aesop spun a story about the importance of the slow tortoise.
At least, that is my story, and I am sticking with it! ;)
