I Walk (and drive) the Line

Lines...seems we spend a good portion of our lives in them, in one shape or another. I bet before 'the wheel' was invented there was 'the line'..."Uh...Og cut in line...Torg kill Og." Okay, they probably didn't have the language skills down yet considering English was quite a few years off from its own invention...but hey, if you read Chaucer you probably wouldn't understand it in its original form neither. But he wrote lines...back to being IN them.

I was at the Georgia Aquarium the other day and some portions of it are somewhat narrow and the tanks hold things you'd love to see up close...but common courtesy dictates you are supposed to "wait your turn"...in line...and move up as the line inches closer to each of the exhibits you want to see. There were a good deal of people in wheelchairs when we went, and I would surmise that this wasn't an isolated occurrence...but sure enough a bunch of people just had to go around the people in wheelchairs and cut in front of them. Now it's slow-going enough as it is waiting your turn...but when everyone dashes in front of you...well, you really aren't going to get to see everything there...which just isn't fair. There was this one woman...and I know she couldn't have been oblivious to the fact there were LINES of people, in their respective LINES, progressing to various fish tanks. Here she comes...all boisterous, and defiantly jumping in front of everybody, tank by tank, loudly exclaiming to her child "LOOK, can you find Nemo??? Is THAT Nemo???"...and did this at each tank that I could see until she got both out of eye view and earshot. Me, being from Jersey, had to say something so she could well hear..."No...I don't see Nemo...but I DO see a line". The people in front of me, who were elderly, turned to me and nodded their heads in agreement...other people looked dumbfounded, wanting to speak up, but figuring it wouldn't sink in anyway. Now, no way did she NOT know what she was doing...BUT figuring if she acted totally "blonde"...altho she was brunette...everyone would "understand" and deal with it accordingly, cutting her the leeway that undoubtedly she all too frequently takes advantage of. She was appalling to me...as were all the other people cutting in front of everyone...or the ones who basically parked themselves directly in front of the tanks and were holding court...their own private front-row seat that everyone else in line had to peer around.

Another thing that gets on my nerves...people in cars with the same "line attitude". I live out in Wetumpka...and drive on 231 to get into Montgomery...and in the mornings to take my daughter to school I am also tasked to be "in a line". Now we all know how the road goes...we (with maybe the exception of one driver) travel it all the time. The extreme right lane eventually ends as the road goes back into two lanes to go over the bridge where all the new construction is going on. There are always people who will fly past all the other people (myself included) who have been patiently (or impatiently) waiting for our turn to finally get thru the two lights and get out of the backlog of "traffic" ("traffic as it's known here...that's another blog one day). They use the extreme right lane to pass everyone else, who they can clearly see are going in the same direction as themselves...only they're WAITING their turn. These people then weasel in front of cars whose drivers are all too happy (those morning people, no doubt) to let them cut in front of them. "Ha! NO ONE gets in front of ME...you just try it...I've lived in Jersey...ain't gonna happen, girlfriend." This also is happening a lot on the Northern Blvd off-ramp back to Wetumpka, where you turn right to go onto 231. Everyone is in line, there's only one lane and no more access road (due to the construction) and everyone cuts in front of the whole line and then sneaks in. I've seen the left-hand thru-traffic on the Northern Blvd at a stand-still because "someone" stopped their car and sat and waited for the opportunity to cut in line to the right to get on the off-ramp.

Now, if EVERYONE had my mental attitude...or fortitude...oh, what the heck...just call it "road vendetta", these people would learn their lessons and be forced to keep driving, missing their turns, having to turn around, eventually learning the simple fact: Don't CUT in line...people will get mad...it's selfish and rude...you're just a boorish person with a large hunk of metal around you that you use as your "impervious to others" casing. And something tells me that obnoxious twit of a woman from the aquarium does this all the time.

C'mon...grow up people, we all hated the kids who said "cutzies" and got in front of us in line when we were in grade school...and we still do.