No matter how old, a child still lurks

Ever been to one of those meetings that you think will never end? And I don’t mean just your run-of-the-mill boring meeting. I mean the kind where there’s no set time limit. The kind of meeting that will end when all of the agenda items have been covered down to the minutest detail and not a second sooner.

You begin to have thoughts that you may die of old age before this meeting ends.

Now add a few people that seem to think if three words will do, 30 will be much better.

You start to wonder if it is physically possible to vertically scale the walls of the room and why you’ve got such a clichéd urge.

Also, that from a practical side, scaling the walls wouldn’t provide escape so much as a change in vantage point since the ceiling’s in the way, but it is interesting to note that now you KNOW what “I wanted to climb the walls” really means.

Literally hours have past, but there’s no adjournment in sight; the folks behind the big table in front just keep talking and talking, all about nearly nothing, though you strain to hear and pay attention, just in case they say something important among all the dross.

Whether to collect the leaves on the second or the third Monday six months hence, goes on perhaps for 45 minutes, when there are still 17 items left to cover on the agenda. Nearly another hour goes by while the board discusses the merits of a checkerboard pattern or a dimpled pattern for the new manhole cover to be installed early in 2010. Only 16 more items to go.

This is the kind of meeting where you begin to contemplate the idea that you have inadvertently slipped into The Twilight Zone, only this isn’t the episode where hell is custom designed just for you, this hell is a meeting that will never, ever end, it seems, and there’s no way out.

Mostly, municipal meetings are quite tolerable. Usually, it’s a matter of an hour or two at most; I extract the pertinent facts I think residents would most want to know about, and everyone is happy.

Mundane as they are, municipal meetings can be interesting. Mostly, they’re fairly efficient. Elected officials would usually rather be home more than dragging things out longer than necessary at a twice-monthly meeting. Usually.

Recently, I got reminded of the dark side of municipal meetings. However, even hell has a funny side. And, I found out, no matter how old we get, there’s always a part of us that never ages past about 9 or 10. I have proof.

Anyway, getting back to hell, the first hour or two, everyone is very patient. Everyone is still acting their age and paying attention, or at least pretending to. Occasionally people shift in their seats or change position. There’s perhaps a hint of impatience as things wear on and the revelation that all of this is going to take a while sinks in, but everyone seems determined to get through it.

By the time we’re in the beginning of the third hour of hell, something interesting begins to happen.

Grown adults begin to do things normally associated with children. Senior citizens, no matter how stern or proper, are not excepted.

First the audience begins to whisper to each other, furtively at first and then more openly.

Then they begin to fidget. Toes tap. Pencils tap. Fingers tap.

Others begin to drift off in other ways. More than one person starts to doze off. Those sitting on couches are more susceptible. Several actual snores are even heard from that direction.

Next comes the face pulling. Ever see little kids in a classroom when the teacher’s speaking, but they’re bored to tears? Pinching along the jaw line. Playing with a lip. Pulling at eye(s). Bore an audience to tears, and I guarantee you, in the third hour, even octogenarians will be doing this. I’ve seen it.

The ones that aren’t working at rearranging their facial features are determinedly trying not to convey their impatience, but betray themselves anyway. A solid third of the audience is sitting with a hand covering their mouths in some way, a sure sign they are trying to cover their feelings (or expression).

Doggedly, the convened board continues to drone on. You’d think they’d notice they’re “losing” their audience, but no, this is hell. The literal pantomime of extreme boredom directly in front of them is completely lost in a never-ending stream of self-important rhetoric.

Eye rolling begins in earnest. If it were a sound it would be deafening, particularly when the subject at hand looks like it might get to a close, but just before the chair calls for moving to the next topic (you can nearly hear the gasps of held breath here) one more board member has to have their say.

It’s now nearly four hours since the meeting convened. There’s foot swinging galore. The eyeball rolling would put a room full of pre-teen females to shame. There’s folks that have there heads in their hands, either in a classic “hiding” position or if they’re sitting at a table, with head rested on the arms on the table, in a classic “heads down” pose straight from kindergarten.

All things must come to an end sometime, though. When “hell” finally adjourned, the audience scattered like a grammar school class let out for recess.

By the time they reached the parking lot, they’d regained all their years. But I know there are little kids still inside every one. I’ve seen them.

(Originally published in The Easton News, June 8, 2006)