IF YOU FIND THE WORLD BAFFLING, GET IN LINE

If ever there is a universal experience, it is this: You get in the line at a grocery store, bide your time for a few moments and anxiety begins to surface on discovery other lines are moving more rapidly.

You look up and down the rows of check-out stands, and customers who were still fishing through the frozen food shelves when you joined your line are getting their groceries bagged.

Given the time one has to spend in a queue idling while the person ahead of you monkeys with coupons or confers on the weather, it provides an opportunity for the self-esteem-lowering exercise of believing you chose badly.

"Two aisles diverged in a bustling store," Robert Frost might have written in the days of supermarkets, "and I chose the one most traveled by. Why?"

A complete breakdown in meter, obviously, and probably a setback in the career of Robert Frost, who was better off sticking to ruminations in snowy woods.

Limit this observation not just to markets but to all endeavors where many people want the same thing in the shortest necessary time. Go to the license bureau and there is an ordained feeling that people in the other line have uncomplicated documents while you are behind someone with title problems. Find yourself in a traffic tie-up on an interstate highway and try to guess which lane will get you past the obstruction quickest; at great risk to your car and family, and great wear on your blinker, the lime green Maverick that had been on your rear bumper inevitably ends up miles ahead.

All of this is self-produced misery brought on by thwarted expectations and unforeseen free time, which we never quite know what to do with. Instead of taking time in what is a frenzied life to celebrate the fact nothing more is expected of you for a few minutes than to wait it out in a line (hey, everybody will understand, so be happy), you lend those moments to the worst part of your nature, impatience.

If there is a silver lining to be found in these small life lessons, it might be to gather some understanding that the human experience is a series of lines.

Start at the beginning. There are obvious applications to the reproductive processes, since conception is often a frantic enterprise and gestation requires a nod to the leisurely course of nature. The original line formed in the womb, and you waited until things were set for your life to commence.

Children are inexplicably in a hurry, though they have little to rush around about. The only time you see them lackadaisical is when directed to clean their rooms or pick up their clothes.

When people get to the age of 15, they can't wait to be 16. When they get to be 20, they can't wait to be 21. When they get to be 50, they wish they were 21. There is something exceedingly unfair about this impatience thing.

The old credo of the military was "hurry up and wait" ... you double-time it to some place, only to stand in line. In college, the same expression was used, as the hustle to take care of the details of a new academic year gave way to queues that meandered toward the bursar's cage or the textbook distribution.

Finally, the world of politics takes a cue from life ... or is it the other way around? James Brady is shot in 1981 as a presidential press secretary. Twelve years later, after a personal crusade to put some restraint on the sale of handguns, Brady saw passage of legislation that bore his name.

He got in line.

Americans were said to be overwhelmingly in favor of the Brady bill, though perhaps there was a dab of sympathy for a good man caught in a savage crossfire. Legislators got the message, some viewing it as a step forward in the fight against an epidemic of violent crime; many lawmakers, among them some who voted for the measure, conceded the bill would not do much in that regard. But they got in line.

Gambling entrepreneurs, who aren't instinctively maritime, would prefer to have their operations on dry land. Las Vegas is an extreme example of this desire, but it makes a point. However, most of America doesn't feel comfortable with the idea of land-based casinos. A courthship is needed.

So the gambling interests got in line. The Midwest's rivers rise these days with water displaced by sailing vessels that have crap tables nailed to their decks. (You can't throw the dice again if a nasty wake affects your roll.) Gradually, the influence of this enterprise will wear away public sentiment (at least that manifested in regulatory circles) and the boats will moor and sail no more.

Give the entrepreneurs credit. They got in line ... and will make good money as they wait.

There are those who believe tax elections are won not the first, not even the second, time on the ballot, a view that revenue raising isn't so much a matter of public conviction as it is public erosion. If it's on the ballot enough, it must be necessary. Why? Because it keeps going on the ballot, stupid. Pay attention and get in line.

In the world of dueling aphorisms, patience is a virtue but he who hesitates is lost. Meaning, in odd combination, that you are successful in some endeavor until you aren't, or vice versa.

Is this cynical? If you think so, get in line.

Ken Newton is editor of the Southeast Missourian.