The Wit's Guide to Waiting
Or, the opposite of talking
What are you waiting for? If you’re honest, you’re waiting for the other person to stop talking.
“The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.”
— Fran Lebowitz
Rebecca West famously declared that there was no such thing as conversation, only intersecting monologues. An even more cynical view is that the monologues rarely meet. Dorothy Parker recalled that the glory days of the Algonquin Round Table were really just quips passing in the night:
“Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them.”
— Dorothy Parker
It’s no coincidence that all these observations about waiting were made by women. Starting with Penelope in The Odyssey, ladies have always been waiting, generally for men to stop talking. Margaret Atwood flipped the script when she wrote The Penelopiad in 2005, the thrust of which was that there was actually plenty going on back at the ranch. It’s just a question of who’s paying attention.
“Lady in waiting: that’s what they used to call those stores where you could buy maternity clothes. Woman in waiting sounds more like someone in a train station. Waiting is also a place: it is wherever you wait. For me it’s this room.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
The elemental structure of a joke requires the build up of tension so that it can be relieved with a laugh; it requires waiting. You can’t jump right to the punchline. The Shaggy Dog Story is the epitome of the waiting joke. How long will you wait for it? The longer you listen, the more of the joke is on you.
The best shaggy dog story does not actually feature a canine with lax grooming standards. Instead, the protagonist is a teenager working up the courage to invite his sweetheart to the big dance. He waits behind a long line of suitors to ask her, and to his relief she says yes. Then — and this is the part you describe in intricate detail over the course of an hour — he sets out to obtain corsage, tuxedo, transportation, prophylactics* (*depending on your audience), etc, each taking a great deal of time and waiting. Finally, they arrive at the dance and the sweetheart needs a drink. Our hero spies a punch bowl in the auditorium and to his great relief: There is no punchline.
— GWQ No. 101
No public figure has used this rhetorical strategy to worse effect than H.H. Asquith, British prime minister during the First World War. When asked a difficult question in the House of Commons in April 1910, he responded “Wait and see.” The first time it was a genius move, but then he did it again and again. He became known as Old Wait and See, and matches that took a long time to ignite were nicknamed Asquiths or Wait and Sees. If you’re going to make them wait, you really do have to make them see.
“Now, we play the waiting game. Aw, the waiting game sucks. Let’s play Hungry Hungry Hippos!”
— Homer Simpson
If you can wait forever, you’re not actually waiting. In that sense, infinite patience is a stoic superpower. And yet, this mind trick can still motivate: As the astronomer Johannes Kepler said of his 1619 treatise Harmony of the World, “I write the book to be read, either now or by posterity. Which, I care not. It may well wait a century for a reader, as long as God waited six thousand years for a discoverer.” Similarly, when Franz Liszt was told late in life that his music was being neglected, he responded, “I can wait.”
“Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.”
— Don Marquis
I’m Waiting for the (Mail)Man
But wait, there’s more!
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“If you wait long enough, suddenly nothing will happen.”
— Jack Gardner
My daughter asks why they call them waiters in restaurants because you’re the one who has to wait. In her defense, it was a loooong pandemic. When the food arrives, what will it be? (We already had (The Wit’s Guide To) Breakfast.)
Get Wit Quick No. 196 has perfected the art of arrhythmic finger drumming. My father once told me that the key to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is in the title: They’re waiting for God in overtime. The old man rarely offered advice on existential literature, so when he did, I took note. Of course the trick to waiting is to have a book with you, but you’re more likely to have a phone, and of course you can read a book on your phone in the same way that you can order a salad at a fast-food restaurant. You could in theory have Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting with you, but theoretical readers don’t do much for sales. “Am I in ❤️ ?” Roland Barthes asked. “Yes, since I’m waiting.”