…i’ve always suspected that i might be an impatient person…

the stanford marshmallow study: began in 1960—hungry 4-year-olds were offered a marshmallow, but were told that if they could wait for the experimenter to leave the room & then return, they would get 2 marshmallows instead of 1.  1/3 of the kids grabbed one immediately, a few more waited for awhile, and another 1/3 waited the entire 15-20 mins for the experimenter to get back.  this was a study about self discipline and said a lot about these children and the types of adults they would grow up to be. turns out that when checking on these kids years later, the ones who grabbed the 1 marshmallow quickly turned out to be impulsive, drug-addicted saps who were involved in unhappy relationships & were just all-around unhealthy people altogether. the ones who waited for 2 grew up to be successful, well-adjusted adults with happy, perfect kids & lives, and yachts & stuff…yeah right.
ok, first of all, who would be cruel enough to starve 4 year olds anyway?? and then only offer 1 OR 2 marshmallows??? and they could only get 2 if they voluntarily suffered longer than the others? can’t you just picture starved 4-year-old kids, crawling across the floor to a table with a single marshmallow for each of them? …no milk or anything…those poor dears. why weren’t these evil “interviewers” prosecuted? and why were the results so extreme? couldn’t there have been a happy medium…like, if you waited long enough to get 2, but rebelled and asked to be rewarded with a slice of cake…or $13 instead, couldn’t you have been viewed as..industrious…??  or if you only wanted 1 marshmallow in the first place, couldn’t you have been seen as mature or something?  …i dunno…i don’t have all the details of the study…i’m just saying.

the 2 people that i’m closest to are 2-marshmallow people…they are very patient folks who are able to pace themselves and they practice self control regularly…according to one of them, if i had participated in this study, i would’ve gobbled my 1 marshmallow immediately & then talked a couple of the patient kids into happily offering me the 2 marshmallows that they waited on so patiently…and i would’ve saved those for later. i don’t know what the study would say about that, but i’m thinking it would be something along the lines of ‘future millionaire’.