***
"Stop talking to him!" I wanted to shout...but I didn't shout. I just said it loud enough that I could hear it; maybe the first two people in front of me heard it too; I don't know. They didn't react. Why did I care if one person talked to another? It was important. It wasn't just that I was in a desperate hurry (think Jackie Chan in one of the Rush Hour movies where he's scrambling for the detonator to the bomb that's taped inside his mouth kind of desperate hurry), I was about to miss watching my daughter perform in her team's final show at the state tournament; and I was trapped.
I had already given my money and placed my order with the young lady who took the money and orders at the beginning of the sandwich line. She was quick, quick, I tell ya, quick at taking both orders and money. She also quickly placed the specified meat, cheese, and vegetable toppings on a plate. From that point on, everything progressed in slow motion. I'll get back to this.
The venue was one of those places that puts you through a metal detector and strip search before you enter. They weren't looking for weapons (although I think they do take those away if they find them). They were checking to make sure that no one was carrying anything to eat. Woe to the individual with a Snickers bar secreted in his pocket, or a club sandwich cached inside his coat. Possession of water was a capital offense.
After we made it through the food-free decontamination chamber, we had to find our seats. I had purchased reserved seats on-line. I had wanted to print them out. Not allowed. The reserved seat tickets could only be accessed via an app on the smart phone. As we had passed through the no-nourishment security zone, the guard had tapped the phone screen to validate the tickets. The tickets promptly disappeared. I couldn't remember the seat numbers. I thought that I did, but I wasn't sure. I went to the numbers that I thought that I remembered. There were already people in them, and they said that those seats were not reserved. We sat down in someone else's seats to be out of the way while I tried to recover the tickets on the phone. I knew they were someone else's because we hadn't been there one minute before some nice people showed up asking about those seats, wondering whether we had tickets for them. I admitted that we did not, but were only using them as a resting point while checking my phone for our actual seats. We moved back up to the area walkway.
While I got much of the ticket information to materialize on my phone, the seat numbers remained trapped in the inscrutable ether of the nefarious app. I had my wife watch for security to see if they could help us. After a few minutes, she told me a security person was coming our way. I looked, expecting to find a hulking shaven-headed brute in an undersized t-shirt, and carrying a dumbbell and a walkie-talkie. Instead, I discovered a short lady who looked like she would've been more comfortable roaming the aisles of Wal-mart (Ooooh. New fictional setting idea: The Isle of Waal Maart--probably not). She couldn't make it work either. We thought maybe part of the problem could be the poor reception at our location. She said that her daughter could help, and that there was good phone reception where her daughter was.
Reluctantly, I agreed to go with the woman to see her daughter. I was picturing a teenager. Nope. She was a hulking brute--not really. She was larger than either her mother or I. She was also a member of security.
She took my phone, and said, "These tickets have already been validated."
I found her tone somewhat accusatory. "Yes," I said. "They validated them when we came in."
"Okay," she said. She did something very quickly that made the tickets appear, with seat numbers and everything.
The seat numbers were those that I had remembered, except for being one section over. So I remembered the right seats, just the wrong section. The seats were very comfortable. We sat beside a nice couple from the other side of the state. The woman thought my wife looked familiar, but they couldn't ever put themselves at the same time and place. The man didn't say much.
Fast forward about 5 hours. We're getting hungry; famished we were, and the nasty hobbitses wouldn't give us anything to eat. We hadn't wanted to buy anything at the 3 billion percent markup at the venue. At last I crumbled, mostly because I knew my wife needed something, even though she wasn't saying anything about it. At the break, I went in search, and found
I noticed that the couple next to us had some bags of nuts. I asked the man where they got them. He told me that they got them on the other side of the stadium; there were many more food offerings over there. The break was nearly over, but I thought that I could go over there and kill a burger or something, and bring it back before my daughter's team performed--there were a few teams in front of hers; I had time. I had not accounted for Slow-Motion Man in my reckoning.
I had chosen the sandwich line, rather than the burgers, or any of the various other splendid offerings, because I was in a hurry; it was the shortest line. I hadn't realized that the line passed through another dimension, a dimension of sight, of sound; a dimension where time stood still. No. Time didn't stand still, just the old guy who was supposed to be completing the sandwiches--he stood still. I felt like Kirk watching his crew after he had been drugged with the Scalosian water (See Wink of An Eye S3 E11). All the guy had to do was to put the meat, cheese, and vegetables on the bread (which all seemed backwards to me). To say that he moved at a snail's pace would be an understatement. I had to shave three times while I stood in line.
So when the people who had been at the front of the line when I arrived (and by front, I mean already at Mr. Slow-Motion Man's spot), wanted to stand and talk to him after they had already received their sandwiches, I had difficulty maintaining the sweet, happy-go-lucky attitude for which I am known. I felt like John Pinette.
Eventually, Slow-Motion Man proved himself capable movement slightly faster than the shadow on a sundial. I got my sandwich, half for me, and half for my wife, along with a single bottle of water (I could't borrow enough on the second mortgage I had to take out to afford a second bottle). I hurried back into the stadium just in time to hear the announcer saying the name of my daughter's team. Great! I was just in time.
It turned out that I was just in time to see them march off at the conclusion of their performance. Curse you, Mr. Slow-Motion Man!
But my wife was happy to have the sandwich. So I got that going for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment