Loss of patience

It is the worst timing to rain early in the morning, on a working day especially. There will be traffic congestion on the roads and many will be late for school or work. The school going kids will most likely soak in the rains and with wet uniforms it would be certainly very uncomfortable for them.

Passing through small town Labu on my way to work this morning, there were many parents sending their kids to school on motorcycles and these poor kids although wearing rain coats, were wet, but kids being kids, never complained that how come some of their school mates going to school sitting comfortably in their parents’ cars while they must endure ill-timed rains on a bicycle or motorcycle. Even though wet, some were still putting up a smiley face as they were whispering good bye to their parents.

I recalled when I was young, my mom would be cycling my younger brother and me to school and my father would be fetching us back after his work. My late mother was a rather fat lady then, cycling an old bicycle, two of us sitting right at the back hugging her so tightly, so worried that we might fall as our mother was not so good in cycling and with her fatty body, it could be so clumsy at times. So, day in day out, that was how I went to school until I was old enough to cycle on my own.

Those days we never complained why did we had to go to school that way, neither did our mother complained why must she cycle a few kilometers to send her kids to school that way, enduring the heat of the sun and occasional rains. Those days there were very few cars on the roads and not many people could really afford to own one, having a motorcycle at home was already a luxury.

When I was old enough, I asked my parents to buy me a bicycle. What I was having in mind then was a BMX, the mountain bicycle which was so popular among teenagers during the seventies, a sport-car-type of bicycle so to speak but alas my father bought me an ordinary one similar to that used by those old aunties going to wet market for their daily routine shopping. Still it was better than none; I was not complaining although a little bit disappointed, a not so fancy bicycle was better than walking. So since then, bicycle was my mode of transportation until I was old enough to think that maybe bicycle would get me too far, but at that time the so called “far” was Kangar, about 20 km away from my home town Arau. I needed to go there for tuitions.

Come to think about it, I guess our patience gets exhausted with ages. As we got older, we become so easily irritated for nothing. People drive too slowly, we got irritated, honking and cursing and sometimes even putting up centre finger for releasing the unnecessary distress. My wife was saying the other day that I could be inflicted by chronic anger as I tend to get irritated for no apparent reasons. She could be right. But come to think about it again, could the availability of all these modern day advancements such as car make us more impatience? Everyone want to be faster than the rest of the people and in the way forgetting those olden days when everyone cycled slowly, and cheerfully whispering to friends or even strangers along the road.