Waiting In Line

We hate to wait, and we especially hate to wait in checkout lines, especially in grocery store checkout lines. We are all allotted one and a half billion heartbeats, and we are loathe to expend more than a couple of them in checkout lines. No matter how long we have shambled through aisles and departments; no matter how long we have lingered before shelves and displays; no matter that the average wait is under 5 minutes, according to a 2007 study, and that we overestimate the wait by as much as 50%; no matter whether or not we have anything better to do, or anything at all to do; if we do not move, with gazelle-like speed, through the checkout line, the thudding kick-drum of impatience thumps within us. And, can anything be more abysmal, more an affront to all that is holy and just, than to choose a line only to see the one we ignored move faster? One need not be an evolutionary biologist to know, with the certainty of an evangelical holding four aces, that the human genome, somewhere in its tangled grammar, contains a gene whose expression is waiting irritation.

Undoubtedly, I am missing that gene, for I don’t mind waiting in checkout lines; in fact, I actually enjoy it. Whitman declared, “I witness and wait.” I witness as I wait.

I find product placement—that cynical “Oh, yeah” in response to classical economics theory of utility-maximizing, rational-choice consumerism—quite educational, a multi-course feast for the enquiring mind. From the various magazines and tabloids I learn that Elvis was abducted by aliens, Clint Eastwood is being hassled by the FBI, Nostradamus has predicted the outcome of the 2012 presidential election, the 100 prophecies that will come true before Christmas, and a potential epidemic from a new form of influenza—the snake flu. I learn the latest intelligence about Mel and Oksana or Brad and Angelina or Ashton and Demi or Jennifer and Justin or Kim and Kris or George Clooney and whoever. I learn the latest escapades, mostly tawdry, sometimes tragic, periodically inspiring, of celebrities, near-celebrities, pseudo-celebrities, and wannabe celebrities—the infidelities, the spats, the boorish behavior, the unmake-upped moments. I learn how to make a perfect pie crust, hard-boil an egg in a microwave, and keep shoelaces from unraveling. I learn the 26 ways to use vinegar, the 7 best pick-up lines, the 10 things never to say on a first date, the 3 magic moves to flatten your belly, an amazingly easy way to remove counter stains, and the 5 secrets to reducing your spouse to drooling desire. I learn about fashion and technology and home décor and fine cuisine and budget dining and medical advances. The checkout line is encyclopedic, a Harvard for the unlegacied.

And there is moral improvement to be had while waiting to check out. I look right at, I mean really regard, and then, in a burst of smug self-satisfaction, resist the farrago of sugared seductions, the candied temptations, that surround me. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, get thee behind me; Hershey’s Kisses, I will not give thee a foothold; Tootsie Roll Pops, I spurn thy allurements and cast thee aside. Who can doubt that free will exists, that resolute singleness of purpose can restrain the churning force of desire. In the humble checkout line, I find proof positive.

Perhaps most puzzling, certainly to my wife Kathy, is that, while I tend to be socially reticent, in checkout lines I become suddenly and strangely chatty. Once, to a woman behind me with a large, shockingly pink purse resting in the child’s seat of her shopping cart, I said, “That’s certainly a striking purse.” “Oh, thanks,” she said; “I bought it when I was in Memphis.” “I hope you got a chance to visit Graceland while you were there,” I replied. She smiled, and tuned the purse around. Emblazoned in rhinestones on its front was “Elvis.” “I bought it there,” she said. For the next five minutes we parsed Elvis as if he were a compound-complex sentence: his best songs, his best movies, his shopping for a pink and black suit at Bernard Lansky’s Beale Street store, his fondness for peanut butter and fried banana sandwiches, his picture with Richard Nixon, the fake FBI badge Nixon gave him in response to his request to be made an FBI agent, his incorporation of martial arts moves in the Jailhouse Rock dance sequence. We agreed that his creativity was in adapting songs, and that, in bringing black music into the mainstream, he played a small part in racial integration.

On another occasion, seeing Pop Weaver microwave popcorn among the items of the customer in front of me, I began a conversation that escalated into a friendly debate on the relative merits of microwave popcorn in general. He preferred Pop Weaver because the company’s founder, the Reverend Ira Weaver, was dedicated to providing the healthiest and best-tasting popcorn at the cheapest price. “They don’t advertise,” he said, “and they use plain brown bags. That helps keep the cost down.” I allowed that Pop Weaver was good but held out for the superior taste of Orville Redenbacher; besides, as Orville claimed in his iconic TV ads, every kernel popped. “That’s where the value comes in,” I noted; “minimal waste.” The debate ended in a draw, but we did agree that in the archipelago of satisfyingly salty-crunchy munchables, popcorn was an island of sensible snacking.

From a young checkout cashier, I discovered that she had just learned she was pregnant, that her lineman husband was home for a several-week stay, that she had pork slow-cooking at home in a crock pot, and that dinner that night would consist of shredded pork sandwiches and her favorite food, tater tots. I wanted to say I was a vegetarian and that tater tots contained enough saturated fat to clog a water main. But I didn’t. She was happy. Instead, I told her what was also true: “You know, when I was a kid, I loved tater tots. My dad said I’d turn into a tater tot. I had a nightmare about that.” She laughed. I laughed. We shared a laugh.

Individually, or even taken together, these waiting line conversations did not amount to much, and yet, they amounted to a lot. They took us out beyond the trip-wired, self-defensive perimeters behind which we tend to hunker, took us, if only momentarily, into that often unrealized common life in which we all participate. Too often, we wait impatiently, waiting for the oven timer to chime, for a leaf to fall and a flower to appear, for a meteor to rift the heavens, for our name to be called, our number to come up; waiting for what’s lying in wait to make itself known; waiting for the rapture, the quickening, the gathering of the righteous, for kingdom come that never seems to come; waiting, fist to cheek, elbow on the window sill, for something to pass by worthy of our regard before darkness falls. We wait, feeling that time has stood still, feeling suspended in it, yet all the while it tick-tocks on, as do we, always in transit, always finalizing, heart beating, blood circulating, breath pulsing in and out, growing each moment just a little bit older, time passed time past, an entropic echo, as we wait to check out. In those waiting line conversations, maybe, just maybe, the dense gravity of our minute-and-secondhandedness momentarily lightens and, as the poet Amy Clampett says, we “fall upward.”