You Have to Draw the Line Somewhere

Since when do people not know how to wait on line?

            Imagine if you will: it is 7:30 in the morning, you are tired and cranky, and certainly not a morning person. You arrive at the bus stop where people appear to have forgotten the fundamentals, not to mention the common courtesy, of waiting patiently in an orderly place on line. No! Let’s do away with lines, I think they think as they cluster-fuck together in a clump (or a crowd as some people call it) so that there is no rhyme or reason­­—and just so I can piss the fuck out of all the other passenger-people. Maybe if you would wait on line you could be lucky enough to stand next to me and hear me bitch about how people do not know what a line is anymore.

Here is a line: 

Here is a line of people: 

Here is a bus line: 

Here is a clump (or a crowd—a clumpy crowd): 

I am just short of snapping and holding a sit-in, or a stand-in—a strike more like it. But there is only so much I can do on my own, and that is just bonkers. I never thought I would have to be a monitor of anything outside of elementary school. And the only other choice I have is to promote and install the buddy system—everyone hold hands! 

Some slogans for my petition:

*Get out of town and take a bus, but wait in line first.

*Be kind, wait in line. 

*Don't go to the front of the clump, get on the back of the line.  
*Line up, and shut up! 

The analogy: imagine walking into a super market only to find that the cash register lines are clumps of people who rush all together as a charge, no order whatsoever. And if you are the lucky one who gets there first you can be rung up and pay. Or you could be waiting there for fifteen to thirty minutes and be the last one checked out with your bags in a shopping cart on your way towards the parking lot. Or what about if you went to the bank? Imagine the herd rushing to the teller’s desk when the bank teller says, “Next.” What are these people a magnet-pull hoping they might stick? Nay, they are just plain cutters! 

 

Listen, folks, it is called a bus line for a reason!

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Here is a poem I wrote a few years ago, which I deemed fitting for the discussion. But don't take it too literaturely. Or do. In other words, maybe you should read between the lines. 

Dead Last

There is a line.

Not made of pencil. Not made of pen.

There is a line of people—

a row of hundreds of bodies with heads.

The line sashays through a door of a station;

one by one each head enters the door before them.

Days go by as each passenger of the line

passes through the threshold.

Winter is coming, says Phil, number 29 on line.

And Hugh behind him says, I am running home to grab a jacket.

It does not matter what the line is for—what matters is the man who falls 

bored. He rests his head on the woman’s shoulder before him—unaware of the shift 

in year. And then time is up—

the door is open.

The woman slides her foot forward, in between the beams of the door, and feels a tug

at her back. The man who had rested his head on her neck now drags

his body at her feet. His hands hang on her shoulders; his body bends

like a broken swing.

She knocks on his skull, but his lids do not snap.

She grabs his hands and tries to loosen his grip;

his hands do not budge. Finally she nudges his knuckles off the cap

of her shoulder. He drops stiffly to his knees beside the station door,

one step behind where the line ends. 

She crosses the toll of the threshold.

Two gentlemen, Mr. Ear and Mr. Hand, walk up behind the man at the end of the line.

The two men wait for the door to swing open again;

they wait with a man who has dropped

dead.

Why must we wait so long to ride home, cries Mr. Ear, number 101 in line.

And Mr. Hand replies, One cross over the line.