Could Waiting Be Good for America?

Even though I wake up at 3:30 in the morning, I was like most everyone else in America this morning. As soon as I opened my eyes, I rolled over, picked up the phone, and immediately looked to see who won the presidential election.

No push notifications from the Boston Globe, or Fox News, or WBSM. It was radio silence.

That's interesting, I thought. I didn't entirely expect to have a definitive winner named overnight (as evidenced by my bet with Maddie), but I figured there would be some type of update.

I started scrolling through all of the vote totals in the states that were too close to call.

What if this happens? What if that happens? Nothing but uncertainty.

Much like the sheltering in place the nation did months ago, there's really nothing left for voters to do but chill out and wait for all of these votes to be counted. Any other speculation is really just a waste of time.

As Americans, we do a lot of things very well. We are good at inventing things. We're good at business and working hard. We're great at consuming electronics. What we're really bad at is waiting. We are probably the most impatient people in the world.

So when we're told that we need to wait a week to give the ballots that were dropped in the mail yesterday in Nevada a chance to be counted, it kind of freaks us out. The Pennsylvania ballots have until Friday at 5 p.m. to arrive and be counted. Like it or not, we have to deal with it.

In a world where we get annoyed when our high-speed internet is slow or the Dunkin' drive-thru is taking more than 90 seconds, we are all being forced to wait and see.