Queues have always been a bane to my existence. I can't abide standing in line with other people for anything, not even to eat. So when I'm forced to do that, you can imagine the monsterous stress attack that overtakes me the moment I find myself hedged in between a person in front of me and in back of me. In my whole life, I have never been in a queue that hadn't turned explosive in one form or another. Because I'm forced to obey the unwritten rules of a queue, I'm affronted when someone else doesn't do that -- obey the rules, that is. And, it seems, the older I get the less patience I can muster in that unnatural situation.

I'm reminded of a few recent, but not new, incidences. Nuggets of happenings, I call them. Pieces of occurances in one's life that neither hinder nor advance the cause of one's existence but are nonetheless crazy-making.

All of my banks, I deal with three of them, usually have long, slow moving, nerve-wrecking queues. Although I try to time my visits to their slow times, which is usually at opening, the other morning I failed and ended up being the tenth in line. As the line crept towards the teller's windows, a male customer, to the rear of me, dressed in tattered jeans, a grey, dingy teeshirt and mangled tennis shoes, suddenly broke ranks, ran passed me and, in one leap, jumped the boundary ropes. He reached the merchant's window in a flash, where an idle teller was tending her business. In shock, I asked the security offficer, standing not far from me:

The security officer shrugged.

My number rang up on the electronic board and not wanting to lose my turn by arguing with the officer, I lept forward to the teller, who was housed behind a bullet-proof window. Still miffed, I asked, "How can you let that man--?"

Holding her hand up, in a whisper, she replied, "Please, Sir, we don't take exceptions to those things. We prefer to ignore them rather than take a chance correcting them and perhaps inherit a bigger problem."

"Humph!" I retorted. I finished my transaction and left the bank not feeling good about my victimization.

Exactly an hour later, at my next stop, my second bank, I encountered another example of our species reluctance to conform to the rules of queue. For the second time that morning, I found myself forced to stand in line, fifth spot this time, of twelve. Again a commotion to the rear of me forced me to turn around. A tall, slender, well-dressed, imposing woman had entered the bank, waving her arms wildly as she ran for the teller window, yelling, "Please , please, I have an emergency! I must make a deposit before it's too late!" Out of breath, she almost collapsed onto the teller's counter. She was taken care of immmediately.

My mouth dropped open but there was no security officer in sight to listen to my complaint and jump into action; he was outside minding his own business. In the face of it, I sealed my lips. My fleeting thoughts were: Now if she truly had a bona-fide emergency, one would surmise that she would have had no time to dress before she had left her home and she would have had to arrive at the bank in her nightgown, robe, slippers and hair still in curlers. Some people's lives are way out of control, I mused.

And then, as if my day were not harrowing enough, that very afternoon, at the supermarket, as I queued up to the cashier, an elderly man willfully wedged his cart between mine and the conveyor belt -- yep, you guessed it -- another queue breaker! But this time I smiled and motioned him ahead. I figured that he needed the extra time that afforded him; he was not as long for this world as I was.

All in all, that day was one of my worst queue days.

EDITOR'S NOTE:
If you have a nugget or a nothing, or both that you would like to submit to Cliff, please do. If he uses it, you will receive full recognition from him, I'm sure. Please direct any questions, comments and suggestions to the Editor.