I suppose in a way she did manage to quell my impatience when she told me to “Keep your pants on.” For it was in that moment that my sense of urgency switched from finding the library book — the one that I had been waiting on for the past two weeks, one that was neither in the return bin, nor on the shelf — and turned to focusing on a possible scenario in which I would think taking my pants off would solve anything. Who did she think I was? Did she know my mother? I stood there frozen, in this glorious sea of imagination and wonder, this beautiful library of Washington Elementary, as her words repeated in my head. Neither fire alarm nor peer pressure of any kind would indeed make me do such a thing. Of course I would keep my pants on, but I still wanted that book.

I suppose I’ve always struggled with patience. Maybe we all do. And the messages we receive can often be confusing. They continue to tell us to live in the “now,” but when we need something done, now, they tell us to be patient. These are the thoughts that race through my head, and it is in fact all I can do to “keep my pants on.” But that’s what saves me usually, this laughter. Being able to see the ridiculous. Visualizing it. It stops me. Gets me thinking about something else. And while this may not be actual patience, it does manage to achieve the same goal, so I’m OK with it. We take our victories where we can.

They say our brains reach 90 percent of our adult sizes by the age of six. What they neglect to tell us is that most of that 90 percent we have to relearn on a daily basis. This too makes me smile. And so I keep on learning. I keep on laughing. And for the most part, I do, indeed, keep my pants on.