It occurred to me that some of the most stressful moments in life have been related to: waiting for that vitally important communication which stubbornly refuses to come.
Anyone have any cringe stories about this?
I once (somewhat immaturely and arrogantly) turned down a job offer at a crucial time because I happened to suddenly get two other job interviews that very day for what I considered dream jobs. The wait to hear back after those interviews was one of the most excruciating experiences ever - I lost about 10 pounds over a two week period and was in a constant state of nausea while waiting for the phone to ring and solve all my problems (and you guessed it - neither of them ever did call back).
I went to high school in the Stone Age. We wore bearskins, lived in caves, and had only the hearth fire for home entertainment.
One of my best friends was engaged to a guy in the Air Force. (Air Force rode around on Pterodactyls, you see) The fiance had a younger brother who had just enlisted in the Army. Would I be interested in a pen pal.
Sure.
Obviously this was before the days of email. And phone calls cost as much as a mastodon. All we had were chiseled stone tablets which were strapped to the backs of tortoises.
The letters sure seemed to travel that slowly!
If I didn’t hear back from this soldier within a month or so of my letters, I wasn’t fit for civilization. I drove my family nuts. I drove my friends nuts. And the true target for most of my abuse was the poor mailman!
We started writing to each other in 1968. Eventually, we’d get to visit during the summer. But most of our relationship was conducted through the mail.
How did it end? Well, we celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary next month.
~VOW
Waiting a week to get the results of the biopsy. It was malignant. I was sure it would be but was still a shock. That was one long-ass week. I hope everyone else’s stories are happier!
When I retired from the military, I put in an application to the Department of State for full time employment. The background check is painfully slow and it can take a couple of years to hear back. In the meantime I went to work for a government DOS contractor overseas. It was a shit job with shit management and a lot of backstabbing bullshit going on. I was begging the fates to intercede, and then I got sucker-punched with a bullshit accusation by someone, and was suspended from work pending an internal review. On the last day of my suspension, and not knowing if I still had a job, the phone rang at home: it was the DOS asking if I was still available to work for them. I actually shouted YES!!!
But the best part was to come. I sent in my letter of resignation with my wife the next morning (with instructions not to tell anybody what had happened), which cause a huge stir, and then waited for the inevitable official message from the DOS to the local embassy telling them to pack up my ship and send me back to the states. The embassy copied my boss and he apparently blew a fucking gasket.
I don’t think I have any really exciting stories, but I’ll tell you one thing I absolutely hate, and I hate it with the passion of a thousand suns. It’s when I’m waiting on pins and needles for an important email or text, and suddenly there is the familiar “Ding!” of an incoming message, and the message is something like this: “Wolfpup! Start earning bonus miles today when you sign up for the new SpamCorp low-interest credit card!!”. This guarantees a 50% rise in my blood pressure, guarantees that I will never touch any SpamCorp product with a twenty-foot barge pole, and brings forth livid curses on the marketing miscreants and all their kin and their progeny who should erupt in boils and untold pestilence.
Decades ago I worked on a vessel in the North Sea and the only outside contact was written letters. I was also a newlywed and anxious for contact from home. Replies to correspondence took about a month (2 weeks to home, 2 weeks for her response letter to make it to me). As the 4 week mark approached, I was really excited when each support or supply ship arrived, and could barely wait until my shift was over. I think the final hours after a ship had arrived and I knew via grapevine it had mail were the worst.
Waiting to find out if I’d be laid off. The office I worked in was closing permanently on a Friday, and there was no guarantee I would be able to work at another office.
Normally we closed at 5. The place basically shut down at 3. I had received no call or other contact. Then about an hour later somebody told me to turn my computer back on and check my email. (They knew!) So I checked and… yeah, there was an offer. I went from thinking I’d have to slog to find another job, to having to travel almost two hours one way on Monday, to a city I had never been in, and would have to spend some time on the weekend Googling how to get there. Better than nothing…
For the next few months I had to wait anxiously to get a job back in town. My phone was causing issues at the time, too, so I feared missing a call or voicemail. That was pointless… I was told about the new offer by email.
In June of 2015 I had a fast growing lump removed from my dogs chest. It was sent for pathology and nada. We had an appointment to go back in two weeks to remove the staples. I called and asked about the report. The tech said we’ll talk about that at the appointment. I knew it was not good news. He had Mast Cell tumor without clean margins. Doc said bring him back when it returns. It never did. I was pissed that I lost almost two weeks. I took him to another Vet and spent over $900 in blood tests to type and grade the tumor. Wasted money. That Vet actually offered radiation, chemo or do nothing. I chose to do nothing. Here were are almost 4 years later and today is his 13th Birthday.
When my Mom grew seriously ill during the last two years of her life, I spent every day dreading “that call or text message”. He went into the hospital with pneumonia and spent less than a week at home before we had to put her in a care home. Several times I was told or texted that she was in the emergency room, often late at night. The last time she went to the emergency room (the doctor said she may not make it through the night), we stayed until 1-2am and she was taken back to the care home. About 2pm that day, my sister woke me from my nap and told me that she passed away. That was worse than getting a call or text because the message was immediate, not something I could have ignored in my sleep.
April 1969, waiting for college admission letters. They arrived on time, and were sitting on the floor under the mail slot. One was thick and one was thin.
