Monday, November 23, 2015

In line at target

In line at target thinking about how long lines don't bother me because there is usually enough stimulus to arouse a preoccuping train of thought, however i recognize that my patience is unique and the rest of this line is probably frustrated by its unusual length, although most likely only an additional minute or two out of someone's day, twice as long as one would usually expect. I observed the woman behind me, late 50's Eastern European, with a slight accent, wearing light jewelry, lets call her Babushka, was in particular distress. Through seemingly no provocation she shouted "this is too long, I give up."
"what does that mean you, 'give up'?" i replied with meek curiosity, fairly confidant i would receive no reply. she didn't seem to be talking to me, despite speaking in my direction, but rather addressing the store in general.
How does one "give up" in this situation. It isn't a war, you can't surrender with a white flag. Waiting in line is not really an activity, its not like you quit running or swimming, you're just standing in a line. Is that too hard? to be alone with your thoughts and nothing to do for a minute. Do you just place your stuff on the shelf with the magazines and walk past the cashier out the door? Doesn't she realize the amount of time she invested getting to this point? Driving to the store, finding her godiva chocolates, getting in line and waiting for, approximately thirty seconds, before making this formal declaration to the world her lack of perseverance. Is she on that tight of a schedule that she can't spare an extra two minutes of waiting? How could she afford time to even go to the store in the first place?
Unfortunately my curiosity was never satisfied as the lady who was currently getting checked out offered to pay for the ladies chocolate so that she could cut the line. The lady immediately accepted. But I spoke out, "don't do it, too frequently the squeaky wheel gets the grease. We are all waiting in line here, its an insignificant burden we all share when we go to stores." What was I doing, I was speaking up for a position that was not even my own, I was fine with waiting in line while she was clearly agitated.
Fortunatly, my plea was to no avail, the lady moved to the front of the line and swiftly walked off with her chocolate. I wondered if perhaps she had to go to the bathroom.
To diffuse the tension that probably only I felt in that moment, I attempted to strike up conversation with my fellow patriots of line suffrage. Behind me now was a swarthy ponytailed employee, lets call him Ignatious, who appeared to be on break or specifically inept at solving the particular line situation we were struggling under. Behind him was a father and his 4th grade son. The kid, lets call him Jacob, had both arms wrapped around some kind of nerf gun. I said, "hey, what kind of bullets does that nerf gun have? The ones that whistle or the ones that stick? Jacob was too timid to talk to a stranger so his dad, lets call him Kevin Smith, says, "Actually, these are the bullets that go in a clip."
Ignatious speaks up, "they actually discontinued the nerf with the whistle in favor of the clip method, and then optimized them so they fly farther, I have two ... And 4 interchangeable clips That i play zombies with my friends at school. The .... Is the best gun because it takes every size clip and has the best rapid fire mode."
Kevin smith gently chides, "Where do you keep your books?"
Ignatious unphazed replied, "In my bookbag, I can actually keep ...."
It was my turn in line, I abandoned Jacob and Kevin Smith to the nerd rambling of Ignatious.
I don't understand the motivations of people sometimes. You would think people would be more ashamed of being different, Its bad enough that you are wearing a game of thrones t-shirt, you don't need to prove to me that you know all the names of the characters. It reminds me of guys who go to the gym too much and so that they are unnecessarily large, and then on top of that they will flex to make themselves even bigger. I want to tell them that they need to do the opposite of flexing just so I can feel like we are both members of the same species. This is also my message to nerds, quit flexing. How about pretending you don't know for once and let a child be wrong about trivial minutia.

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