Bruce Cameron

Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2008.

Whenever someone taps me on the shoulder and asks, “Is this the right line?” I can always be confident when I answer, “No.” If it were the right line, I wouldn’t be standing in it.

My ability to find the slowest-moving line wherever I go is so extraordinary it’s practically a superpower.

When I’m in the grocery store, I inevitably wind up behind a woman attempting to use more than 100 coupons to purchase a dozen items. Every time a coupon is rejected for, say, being both expired and from Bolivia, she appeals to the Ninth Circuit Court. If the coupon is actually valid, she wants to discuss where she found the thing, like a big-game hunter bragging about bringing down a charging rhino. My vanilla ice cream turns to vanilla ice soup, my lettuce wilts into a green film, my eggs hatch and start peeping.

“Do you still have double-coupon day?” the woman negotiating for her groceries asks.

“Yes, but only on Wednesday,” the cashier informs her. “Day after tomorrow.”

“Wednesday,” the woman murmurs thoughtfully. At this rate, she’s going to make it.

Another cashier approaches the man behind me. “I can take you at register 5,” she says to him. “But not you,” she tells me. “You have to stand there like someone buying shoes in the Soviet Union.”

Actually, she doesn’t say anything to me. That’s another one of my superpowers: When I’m standing in line, I’m invisible. I’ve confidently stridden up to the counter at the post office, only to have the “This Window Closed” sign placed in front of me when I arrive. The postal clerk didn’t see me, so I’m forced to return to the long line, where I’ve lost my place and, since I’m invisible, no one seems to remember I was next. I have to go to the back of the line and start over.

The man in front of me has a lot of boxes. “I’m mailing everything I own to seven different countries,” he boasts proudly.

At the bank, I invariably find myself behind the man who heaves a huge bag up on the counter.

“Been saving pennies for 18 years,” he explains to the teller.

“Our coin counter is broken, so we’ll have to roll these by hand,” the teller replies.

“Oh, well,” he winks, “I don’t have anything better to do.”

When my son was in high school, I spent most of my mornings waiting for him to wake up. Sometimes I would gently try to rouse him by screaming, “Bears are attacking!” or, “Your sister’s on fire!” while pouring milk on his face. But most of the time I was pretty aggressive. My son, though, could sleep through a waterboarding.

“If you’re late to school every day,” I’d warn him as he shambled out the door a full hour behind schedule, “you’ll flunk out.”

“So?” he’d sneer maturely.

“So you won’t graduate. You won’t be able to get a good job.”

“So?”

“So you’ll be broke, living in your father’s basement, with no friends and no life.”

“So?”

The other day I found myself at an intersection where a left turn is legal only during a solar eclipse. I waited so long for my little green arrow I began to accumulate parking tickets.

As I sat, an old man with a walker began to make his slow, careful way through the intersection. Naturally, I was able to use my superpowers to have him positioned directly in front of my car when the left-turn arrow made its rare appearance. Cars behind me honked furiously, apparently OK with the idea of running over the guy.

My cell phone rang: It was my son, and I described the situation to him as my arrow winked out. “This guy moves at like a half mile an hour! I missed my turn completely!” I fumed.

“So?” my son observed sympathetically. “And which one of you has it worse?”

My son, who couldn’t be bothered with punctuality or even waking up during high school, now holds down a 4.0 GPA in college and has accumulated enough perspective to impart worldly wisdom to his own father.

It was worth the wait.

(Bruce Cameron is an author and syndicated columnist with a Website at http://www.wbrucecameron. com.)

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