What’s your hurry?

I’ve read that maturity is the ability to delay gratification. I puzzled over this notion and concluded that along with scores of other folks, I might be a tad immature.

Have you noticed that food and beverages are designed for quick preparation? Americans subsist on instant everything, including heat ‘n’ eat meals.

Let’s face it, brewing coffee is a no-brainer. Instant coffee requires that we measure coffee into a cup, boil water and pour the boiled water into said cup. A Mr. Coffee type brewer entails a filter, a measure of coffee and the dexterity to pour water, and voilà! A decent cup of coffee in about four minutes.

Just when we thought that brewing a cuppa joe couldn’t get easier or faster, along comes the single cup coffee brewer.

I like coffee, but Frank is the coffee connoisseur. He knows where to get a good cup of coffee and who serves “old” coffee. (Frank turns off the coffee maker as soon as he brews his coffee to ensure that his coffee doesn’t “get old.”)

With this in mind, I figured that a single cup coffee brewer would be ideal for us. Instead of ground coffee, the machine uses those little coffee thingamajigs, which are a bit costly but worth it. There are no filters to buy, no fuss or muss. It brews a delicious cup of coffee, tea or hot chocolate in less than a New York minute.

Talking about quick fixes, who hasn’t succumbed to the plethora of weight loss gimmicks that promise to melt body fat with little effort?

After giving birth to my son Jeff, my weight drifted downward. I read an ad that promoted an inflatable silver vinyl body suit. The suit was purported to accelerate weight loss through high compression and, in addition, redistribute one’s body weight. I bought the suit.

Before doing my chores, I would “suit up.” I suppose I looked weird because Jeff would howl whenever I went near him. (I thought the kid was colicky, when, in fact, he was probably terrified.)

One afternoon, I didn’t get a chance to change out of my suit before Greg, my oldest son, arrived home from kindergarten. He took one look at me and began sobbing, “Where’s my mommy?” I guess he thought aliens from another planet had absconded with his mommy and replaced her with a puffed-up silver robot.

Alas, no quick fix here. The suit did nothing except scare the bejeebers out of my kids. I bought an exercise bike and worked hard to reverse the direction of my sliding body.

Most gals will agree that growing out their hair is a challenging process.

The first time we skip our haircut, we think we’ll manage. Two missed haircuts and we put our hairdresser on speed dial. The “in between” stage becomes the defining moment. We call our hairdresser to request a haircut or hair extensions.

Hair extensions can be braided, glued or woven in. (Ouch!) Six hours later, you have a long, luxurious mane of hair. Nah, I’ll pass on this one.

Who hasn’t thought that hitting the lottery would solve their problems? Some studies suggest that if you were happy before your win, then you will be happy afterward; however, if you’re unhappy before the win, it will change nothing. Here’s more sobering news: One-third of all multimillionaire winners become bankrupt in a few short years.

I was raised to believe that anything worth having is worth waiting for. Societal rules have changed. Nowadays life is all about quick fixes, shortcuts and instant gratification. Is this a good thing? Are we any happier? And the biggie: Are we all immature?

The late opera star Beverly Sills put it this way: “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”

Perhaps she had a point. Well, it’s something to think about while I brew my one-minute cuppa tea.

Ms. Iannelli is a resident of Jamesport.