The Surprising Benefits of Inefficiency
What saves us time also costs us
The restaurant was little more than a collection of picnic tables, their legs submerged in sand. Behind them, the ocean sprawled — that vibrant, pulsing Caribbean blue. Bright and achingly beautiful.
My parents had read about the restaurant in a guidebook, and we had come prepared. We’d brought playing cards, journals, art supplies, books. The restaurant’s claim to fame was that it took over two hours to get your food. If you ordered chicken, which as I recall, may have been the only thing on the menu — if there was a menu at all — the chicken would be selected from a nearby yard, its neck wrung, its feathers stripped.
I was 11 years old at the time, already saddled with homework, already learning how to straddle the demands of basketball practice and math worksheets and weekend volunteer work.
Gone were childhood afternoons of leisurely play. No more exploration for exploration’s sake, no more elaborate games conjured from my imagination, no more more aimless wandering. Time had become a precious resource, and the more efficiently I spent it, the more “successful” I would be.
But summer offered a respite from life’s increasing demands. It was summer for my parents, too, who were teachers at the same school that my sister…
