The Waiting

One of the bad things about my jury summons is that I have to call in to the county courthouse every evening to find out if there is juror selection the next day. It's a form of waiting for the axe to fall that I don't particularly like, although there's nothing that can be done about it.

There's some waiting in the movies. Generally, it has to do with medical conditions. Eithere there's a woman in childbirth, with the harried husband in the hospital waiting room, or else some other sort of surgery. A more grisly variation on this occurs in the wonderful No Way Out, in which hoodlum Richard Widmark waits for the autopsy of his brother to find out whether doctor Sidney Poitier killed him or not.

There's also waiting to die, notably amongst those on death row, in movies like I Want to Live! or Paths of Glory. However, the poor, doomed cast members of On the Beach were also waiting to die.

A completely different kind of waiting is the waiting on tables that occurs in a restaurant. Mildred Pierce is probably the classic restaurant movie, although I've recommended an even better waitress scene in Shadow of a Doubt.

What other classic examples of waiting can you think of?