This isn’t a book review or about kids or anything, so if you’re only reading this for the MG/YA angle (not that I think I have any readers yet who ARE), you can stop reading right now.
This morning I had to go to the DMV to replace my misplaced driver’s license. I got there early and was third in line. Perfect. Maybe ten of us stood there until 8:05 when someone from the back of the line decided to check the hours on the door (the very numbers that were, yes, six inches tall). Turns out that Wednesdays—unlike every other day of the week—that DMV opens at 9. The Internet had lied! (I know, because I immediately double-checked and then sent an email. Thanks, iPhone!)
We all moaned and then went back to our cars, grumbling. Half left. I turned on my heater and began watching a bit of Father of the Bride using the new Netflix app (once again—thanks, iPhone). Rather than driving to an open DMV and getting in the back of the line, I figured I’d pass the time and come to work late. I’d worked an extra half hour the night before, anyway.
Then the newbies started showing up, people who also thought it opened at 8 but were late. By 8:20, people had stopped walking away and started milling around the entrance. Crap. So much for lounging in the car.
Grabbing my purse, I made my way to a group of guys and asked if they’d let me go first since I’d been there since a quarter ‘til. One of them actually said, “Ladies first,” and, thrilled to be a lady, I took my place near the door.
As the time passed, more people arrived. The out-of-work painter I’d been behind in the first line was now twenty people back. I secretly wondered what I would have done if he’d have come up and said that he wanted his place in line. I’d probably feel sheepish, what with all the others who’d let me go in front of them. Maybe I would have said yes, but I would’ve said it really quietly. I wouldn’t move to the back with him, though.
That’s when I realized it was everyone for themselves. Young families with children, the lady with her 15-year-old daughter frantically studying her driver’s manual…the painter…
Charity out the window.
Come on, door, open.
There was this tiny, jittery old Asian guy behind me in line, muttering at everyone. To me, mostly. Things like, “You don’t let anyone in front of you. It’s you, then it’s me. Nobody else.” He was saying that while looking at the guys standing to the side of the line—the same group who’d let me in but somehow didn’t join the growing line. They smirked at his remarks.
“Bunch of smart alecks,” he muttered. Then, as I checked the time on my phone, “You’d better stop cellphoning or I’ll take your place and put you in the back of the line.”
Yes, he said cellphoning.
I live in a very cushy part of Portland. I mean, sure, I’m not in the Pearl and I don’t own or anything, but when I don’t get out past 82nd often, I forget what’s happening. In the line, the main topics: parents who can’t afford the $5 to send their kindergarteners on their school field trip, a guy who lost his fifteen year union job and now is going to take a $12/hr job as a truck driver, and why won’t these lazy *** open the door on time? (the last bit is courtesy of the old man).
And, here in inner-SE Portland, I complain about things like the fact that the café near our office only serves gluten-free pastries. That I can’t afford a $10K wedding, let alone the $20k weddings I see in Portland Bride. That writing three days in a row about Wireless Network Security becomes zombie-ifying.
I looked back at the line snaking into the parking lot. The line I was in the very front of. I immediately looked down at the sidewalk.
Come on, door, open. Open, open.
When the doors opened, I was in and out in under 20 minutes. It was a DMV miracle. The DMV guy was even joking with me, asking to see my driver’s license (Ha-ha. Very funny). Before I knew it, I was driving to work after missing only a half hour. I even walked to pick up an Americano and one of those bland pastries for breakfast.
As I was walking to work along the railroad ties, though, sipping my “treat” (one I’d done nothing to deserve), it hit me. I am lucky. I am so, so, so lucky. It’s silly that a trip to the DMV did this, but I realized that all those times I feel like I’m not making it or that it’s not fair that I can’t have something or have my way—it’s only because I’m comparing myself to the upper echelons. To magazines. To movies. To the exact type of things I know, first-hand, are written by copywriters (like me) and, while aimed at the middle class, are impossible for the majority of us to emulate.
If you ever wonder if you’re the bourgeoisie…you probably are.
The words had just popped into my head and then I saw something on the railroad tracks. I’m not making this up—it’s too cheesy, even for me to make up. A shiny, bronze disk, among the condoms and dirty socks and cans that litter the tracks.
Someone had smashed a penny…and I’d found it, effortlessly. It was like something out there was saying, “Ding ding ding ding! On the nose!”
As I held it in my hand, I decided to start over. I will remember that I’m lucky. I will not take my job for granted. I will not wish for more than I’m willing to work for. I will not squander my gifts. I will not take that moment for granted.
After that, even the vegan, gluten-free coconut banana bar tasted pretty good.
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