The other day, Mylo parks the car, nods, and stretches his
seat to catch a wink in what would be a half-wink chore for me - withdrawing
money from the ATM. There was just one guy waiting and I with none of life's
pressures on me, strolled to join him. Just then, a scooter stops somewhere
behind me and I turn to find a mother-daughter duo. As I watch, the daughter
jumps off the scooter, shares a look with her mother, and runs to take position
behind the guy, while I was just two feet away from my destination. Now, that
creature didn't have a purse, didn't look like she knew the full form of ATM,
and was hardly half as tall as me. And as she was cementing two footprints, the
mother casually parks her scooter, picks her handbag, and with the slowness of
new born baby elephant rummages to find her ATM card.
As she reaches, what has now thankfully become a queue, the
daughter energetically invites her and they share the position, casually
waiting for their turn. Which-would-have-been-my turn! My turn! I stare at the
mother to get an adult connection - nothing. As I was about to shape a retort
in my head about queue etiquette, that two foot nuisance turns to give me a
smirk.
I roar, "Hey, that's my place and you can't hold positions
for your mother in a queue - like throwing a book in and reserving a seat on a
busy bus! What are you, refugees? Oh, you need a dictionary for that, don't
you?"
"And you, you are being proud of your daughter cutting into a
queue like that, when you clearly saw I was next! Shouldn't you be telling her
what's wrong and what's right? Especially in public, towards strangers? You are
setting a bad bad example for her. So get behind me or I'll chop her bloody
ponytail off and kick your scooter down! "
But I didn't. Maybe it was something in my school anthem or
the fact that I didn't have kids of my own, yet. So I waited my turn as I saw
that two footer insist on entering the PIN and pull out the money. But as they
exited towards their scooter, I glared at the mother's receding shadow
wondering how our parents did it.
