Waiting in Line

In theory it should save time to live in a big city. Everything is convienient, there are four hundred places to get the very thing you need, and always someone wtih the 411. But there is one small glitch in this system of supply and demand. Lines.They are everywhere- at the Duane Reade, the public library, and most bathrooms. Not that there aren't lines in North Carolina, but certainly not the way they are here.

At the supermarket down the street you are always in a mad dash to hop in front of someone. Someone's register is always being closed for the afternoon, morning, fifteen minutes, and then it's a race to join the queue that's open. You grab yor eggs and orange juice and try to break in front of that old woman who always uses about three hundred coupons at a time. And she gets social security!

It's really an unbelievable system to me. That we live in a place with ten million people, hundreds of thousands of cash registers and yet the lines are even more unbelievable. On sunday I was returning home from my Kaplan class and passed a random line on 4th street. Just people, maybe 50 gathered, playing cards, smoking, napping in lawn chairs. The line ended at Tower Records on Broadway, so I went in to find out what the line was for. This was about 6 p.m. on Sunday evening. The guy admitted that they were doing a special Pearl Jam concert celebrating their new CD. I said,

"Oh, so that's why they're in line out there."
"What?" He said, squinting at me through black-framed D&G glasses.
"All the people out there."
"No, the line doesn't start until tomorrow afternoon. They're just lined up waiting for the line."

They were lined up waiting for the line? A foreign concept. I remember the lottery at Carolina for basketball tickets, and camping out at State in high school for football tickets. but never lining up to prepare to LINE UP. It seemed a bit over the top. Not unlike New York itself. People are big on the lines. If you don't believe me, try to break in a Starbucks early morning line and see if you make it out alive, with all your appendages attached. I dare you.

Today I'm joining a line. Boyfriend scored us tickets to see Conan O'Brien being taped. And while the actual taping does not commence until 5:30, we will line up way earlier than that. I'm actually taking off work to see this thing happen. Plus Tom Hanks is going to be there. It's all very exciting. But we are lining up in the actual line, not the line to join the line.