if you aint first you're last

After hearing Mr Bolos talk about how Americans truly value speed during class the other day, it got me thinking. I was on my way downtown a few days ago with a friend in pursuit of a famous restaurant in Wrigleyville called Lucky's Sandwich Company known for dishing out a seriously colossal sandwich. After sitting down and placing our order it had only been twenty minutes before we started to get annoyed at how long our food was taking. It hit me right then and there that twenty minutes is not even that long a time and I was worried I had lost all patience in life. The truth is Americans do value speed, and its because over the past several years all we have done is made things  faster. Transportation has become faster and more convenient, the number of fast food chains popping up across the map is rather scary, and perhaps the most drastic of all--the world wide web. It all sounds great at first but there is a much deeper issue associated with speed, and that is that we are becoming too reliant and addicted to speed. Just the other day my WiFi went down for two minutes and all I wanted to do was drop my laptop into the lake. Despite the fact that my laptop is still fully intact and dry, there is really no telling how this speed will affect my patience in the future.

 Speed wasn't the only realization that I had during this holiday weekend adventure. When our food arrived at the table I instantly noticed that it was in fact colossal and then another thought occurred, Americans also value size as well. The bigger something is, the better. Why have a fuel efficient medium sized car when you can get a gas guzzling SUV? Why have an appropriate sized house suitable for just a few people when you can have bodacious mansion? These are some of the examples that mostly pertain to the North Shore, but can also be viewed as American values as well. I am not saying that Speed and Size are necessarily negative values, but they do have affect us all in one way or another. The sandwich turned out to meet expectations and was worth the trip. Maybe bigger is better after all.