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According to unverified estimates bandied about on the internet, every year Americans spend about 37 billion hours waiting in line. Over their lifetime, Americans will spend some 2 to 3 years of their life in queue.

I have absorbed the routine lines of daily living, rarely noticing the wait at the bank, grocery store, post office, Starbuck’s, or on hold with Comcast. However, at the airport I definitely feel the accumulation of years of waiting as I stand in the following sequence of lines:

1. On busy days 2 toll booths on the way to the airport
2. Shuttle from remote parking
3. Kiosk for boarding pass (foolishly I forgot to print mine at home)
4. Security to check ID
5. Second line to disrobe and pass bag and body through scanner
6. Post security Starbuck’s or some other guilty pleasure
7. Pre flight pee
8. First in line at the gate (before they even call my boarding group) to ensure that there will be adequate overhead bin space for my carry-on
9. Line in the jetway to take my seat
10. The plane (and all its passengers) wait in line on the runway to take off
11. In flight pee
12. Line to exit the plane
13. Taxi stand for final ground transportation (or shuttle to rental car)
14. Line at rental car (unless lucky enough to be a gold, emerald or some other type of precious metal customer)
15. Check in at the hotel
16. Elevator line

While I will admit to an undercurrent of weary frustration mixed with resignation, I, along with most Americans, endure lines with exemplary patience. In fact, standing in lines is a quintessential human characteristic, a lesson I learned in childhood and one that I have in turn passed on to our young son.

“Ned, please don’t fidget in line. Remember how we talked about sharing and taking your turn? Well standing in line is just the same except that you are doing it with strangers.”

This was not an easy sell and took several reinforcing efforts, perhaps because patience and waiting in line challenges the more primal instinct of survival of the fitness. After all, I have never seen a group of monkeys peacefully standing in line at the watering hole. Continue reading →

Milestones came at a rapid clip when our son Ned was an infant – crawling, sitting, standing and first words. Once school started, these milestones slowed down, replaced by the predictable progress through one grade after the next. But now here was he was standing in the kitchen in blue blazer and khaki pants – all decked out for his first school dance.

“Let’s go Mom, I’m ready. We’re supposed to pick up Chris on the way.”

“Just one thing before we go, Ned.” I reached for his blue blazer and tied a small red string around the tag, a tip from my friend Marion. “I know that everyone will be wearing the same type of blazer. This will help you find yours in the pile at the end of the evening.” He shook his head in disbelief as we headed to the car.

I had leapt at the chance for this driving responsibility, eager for the captive audience the car provided. Ned had carefully shielded his school life and particularly his co-ed life well beyond my grasp. Perhaps I could learn something along the way with carefully probing questions, or seize a teachable moment.

“How do these dances work, Ned? Do the boys ask the girls to dance, or do you just dance in groups, or maybe the girls can ask the boys?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“At your age, I was in dancing school. The teacher Mrs. Woolson taught us the foxtrot and the waltz.”

“What’s the foxtrot?” asked Ned.

“It’s a type of dance.”

“So when you were a kid, dances had names?”

“Yes they had names, and I had to wear little white socks and gloves. And for music we had this old women thumping away on the piano. We didn’t have any albums or anything.” Continue reading →

Forty-five minutes into our seven hour drive north the traffic comes to a complete standstill just south of Milwaukee. The highway is in the middle of construction and we are totally boxed in with concrete dividers and idling semis; there is no way to peek around to see what is going on. The midday traffic has been light, so the abrupt halt is foreboding, promptly confirmed by the oncoming sound of sirens.

We sit idling for about five minutes, but when the truck driver next to us turns off his rig, I realize that we are probably in for a long wait.  I roll down the window to hear the news. “There’s a big accident up ahead of us,” he says, “a southbound semi crashed into the divider and flipped over into the northbound traffic. There are bodies. Both sides of the highway are completely blocked off.” The grim newsseems to travel quickly through the trapped traffic, and one by one engines turn off and people emerge from their cars into the bright sunlight. Continue reading →