I think that this is some indication that we at the Dope tend to breathe a rarified air. I rather suspect that people who have a hard time learning to read are closer to the majority than the minority, and that a sizable–frightening–percentage of people never do learn.
But they’re not posting on internet messageboards.
This has been done with fMRI; reading uses some different brain areas than does watching moving pictures but beyond that it’s hard to draw useful conclusions. I wish I had a cite to offer, but it’s something my Brain Imaging professor mentioned in passing during a discussion of experimental methodology.
Oh…?
BWAHAHAhahahahahaha!
Yeh, but you got the Atari version. 
If I don’t have a book, I play chess in my head. 
What?
I think I’ll go play piano while a man burns alive right outside the window. Has anybody seen my shoes?
I’ve read all this thread, what do I get?
a loss of an hour or so and about 300 brain cells.
Shit, I didn’t think I had that many left.
Jeez rayh, read through one little and thread and you have to brag about it :rolleyes: 
Holy shit! A thread I started gets Pitted and I don’t realize it until it’s 5 pages long?? I didn’t even realize the original thread had continued on. I saw it gone from Cafe Society and figured it fell down a couple pages. I wasn’t going to go looking for it. I didn’t know it had been moved to MPSIMS!
Thank you OneCentStamp and InvisibleWombat. Good reading comprehension. A+
Admittedly my Subject Line could have been better. I was influenced by my jury duty summoms, which said “Please bring something with you to read” but as InvisibleWombat discovered by reading my OP, I meant that bringing anything to occupy your mind would be a good idea if you know you’re going to have to wait for a long long time.
And I did say that I felt very sorry for people who were in pain or didn’t realize the wait would be so long.
Check with OneCentStamp, willya? If you want to sit in a waiting room/stand in a long line for hours and quietly contemplate, compose poetry, play chess in your head, think about the background stories you’re going to give the characters in the Great American Novel you’re writing, figure out the dinner menu for the next two weeks, catch up on ZZZs, or whatever, you’re not bothering me or anyone around you. Good for anyone who can be inside their own head and like it there. That’s not meant to be sarcastic. Thinkers/dreamers are as interesting to me as readers.
However, if you’re bored and loudly proclaiming to the poor frazzled nurses and everyone in the room/everyone around you about WHY IS IT TAKING SO GODDAMN LONG WHY DO I HAVE TO WAIT HAS EVERYONE GOT THEIR THUMBS UP THEIR ASSES BACK THERE MOTHERFUCKERS BETTER HURRY UP you ARE bothering me and everyone else, and that’s really what my OP was about. It almost always seems as if it’s someone who’s been there before too, which is what perplexes me. They knew it was going to be like that and they still came unprepared to wait.
What the hell is “Puddy-like?”
Good thing I didn’t say that huh?
May I use that if I need to re-post my OP anywhere?
I got it…The Bad Seed! Give me back those shoes!
But of course! It’s hardly my best work, though 
Kidding aside, I believe this was in response to Anaamika saying she didn’t see why people were complaining and I was trying to get clarification as to what she didn’t understand.
(In the interest of closure, after all these many pages I do understand now, and I shall now take Zoe’s ill-gotten shoes)
I don’t think you read your own cite.
From Seinfeld: Elaine had a boyfriend named David Puddy and in one episode they’re flying back from Europe and he sits and stares at the seat in front of him. Elaine is freaked out and tries to give him a magazine but he says “no, I’m good.” They eventually have a fight that leads to (one of many) breakups.
See, this is what happens when you read too much and don’t watch enough television!
No, you didn’t. I didn’t say you did either. Maybe you should pay attention to the threads you start. I said: “This is what really rubbed me the wrong way in the cited thread – the thought that people who choose to spend their long waits not “doing” something are seen as vacant and Puddy-like.” How is that specifically referring to you?
Although personally I’m just as annoyed by those who don’t get the hint that if I’m holding a book open in front of me, I WANT TO READ IT. I had an hour to kill the other day, and I went into the local bar, ordered a burger and a beer, and opened my book. The waitress put in my order and then came back over…
“You’re reading Plato’s Dialogs? I’ve never read anything by Plato. Greek, right? Is it any good? I’ve always wanted to read one of those old philosophers. Would it be pretty easy for me to follow? Should I read something else Greek first? Who’s that guy that wrote The Odyssey?..”
sigh
Maybe I shouldn’t be so darned polite.
More clarification: these are the posts in Equipose’s thread that I’m speaking of.
Sounds like she was just trying to make conversation with you, cut her a break.
Indy, that’s exactly the point! My husband does this to me too - if I’m reading a book, he has NO PROBLEM starting conversation after conversation, interrupting me and not letting me read. Now if I was doing that to him while he was watching TV, it would be considered TERRIBLY rude. If someone was sitting at the bar engrossed in a baseball game on TV, would the waitress think it was acceptable to do the same thing to that patron? Absolutely not. See what I mean?