Just For Fun

I want to take a few days off blogging to reorganize my thoughts. God willing, I’ll post again on Feb. 15^th. Meanwhile, I hope you get a kick out of the following.

As I waited to get in to see a doctor last week for some odd reason I was reminded of a fiction short story I wrote years ago. I stuck the manuscript in a file drawer somewhere and I can’t find it now. But I’ll try to re-create the story here just for the anguish — and for the fun.

In The Waiting Room

The eye exam machine flickered as George brightened the screen by mistakenly twisting the wrong knob.

The old man with his face pressed into the scope flinched at the flash.

Old coot shouldn’t be driving anyhow, George thought.

He failed the old codger without a qualm.

“Go to Hell,” the old man snapped when George stamped REJECTED on his application.

“Not me,” George snickered, “I’m Civil Service.”

People in the A to E line shuffled forward listlessly. D through L milled around in place. M through S applicants squeezed up against the puke-green wall. T to Z and Late-Renewals sagged against the table holding Drive Safety pamphlets.

Time for a break.

Let ‘em wait.

George called over Cindy, Max and Laverne and the four of them strolled into the breakroom/kitchenette behind the Authorized Personnel Only door at the back of the State Driver’s License Bureau.

That left two counter windows open.

That’s plenty, George thought.

No hurry about a coffee break. Where else could customers go anyhow. They’d wait. They certainly wouldn’t drive away without a license. No hurry at all.

George sipped a second cup while regaling Cindy, Max and Laverne, the new girl, with that joke about the cripple and the blind girl. Just before he reached the punch line, the room exploded.

A gas line linked to the propane tank outside the break room wall ruptured killing George, Cindy, Max and Laverne instantly.

None of the driver’s license applicants or any of the other clerks were injured.

George woke up on a hard plastic seat with a fat woman crowding him on his right. A metal bar linked the seat tight against the next seats in the row where Max, Cindy and Laverne sat pressed thigh to thigh. It seemed as though hundreds and hundreds of other people milled about in the room.

Standing room only.

The place smelled musty.

Too many people herded together for too long

On a far wall, a big red sign proclaimed: NO SMOKING!

Below that in smaller print it said NO FOOD OR DRINK ALLOWED.

Another sign announced:

OPEN 24 HOURS FOR YOUR CONVIENCE.
OVER 600 SERVICE WINDOWS TO SERVE YOU
CLIMATE CONTROLLED DO NOT ADJUST THERMOSTAT

A black speaker mounted high on the wall squawked something unintelligible. People in the crowd surged toward the six hundred sixty six counter windows at the front of the room.

Standing on tiptoe, straining to look over the sea of heads, George could see a long row of counter windows, each one made of opaque bullet-proof glass with a tiny awkward hole for speaking through set so that people would have to bend low to hear the seated clerk.

All but seven of the counter windows sported CLOSED USE NEXT WINDOW signs.

The loud speaker squawked again in a blare of static.

“What did it say? What did it say?” the people asked each other.

The mass of people swayed, some left, some right, pushing to get at the few open windows.

“Get in line! Get in line! Line forms on the right,” yelled a uniformed armed guard.

Cindy tugged the guard’s sleeve asking, “What happened? Where are we”?

“You’re not allowed to touch official personnel,” the guard snarled pointing to a huge sign above massive double doors at the end of the room. It said:

ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.

“Get off your butts and get in line,” the guard shouted. “You need to be processed before you can go in there. Line forms on the right”.

George got separated from the others as he pushed toward the right hand wall to join the long line of people there. The line snaked around tarnished brass stanchions draped with frayed green-velvet ropes.

George’s feet and the backs of his legs ached by the time the line inched to the window. He reached a place marked by a strip of yellow tape on the dirty floor and a sign which said, Stand Behind Line Till Called.

A voice yelled next as a fat woman slouched away from the window.

As George leaned forward to peek through that little, low hole in the glass, the shade dropped and a voice boomed, “Closed for lunch. Use next window”.

The line scrambled toward the next window pushing and shoving. George ended up pressed all the way back, two-thirds further away from the window than when he’d started. “Damn, but I need a bathroom,” he muttered.

“You’ll loose your place in line,” said a baggy man a head of him.

“Would you hold my place” George asked.

“That’s not allowed,” the man said. “Against the regulations to save places. No places saved down here. I worked an airport counter for 20 years before my heart attack and I know about regulations”.

George couldn’t wait. He broke out of line and shoved his way across the room to a red door. A sign on the door said:

RESTROOMS ARE FOR OFFICE PERSONNEL ONLY

A keypad lock sealed the door.

George returned to the end of line.

George finally reached Window 478. The clerk behind that low hole in the glass said, “Where are your admittance papers. You have to go to Window 12 to get your papers. Next!”

George fought his way through the press of people to the line at Window 12. “Need to have a Picture ID,” the voice behind the glass said. “No papers issued without a photo ID. Next!”

George lifted his tie to show his photo ID. He always clipped it to the point of his tie to embarrass any whining customer who wanted to know his name bad enough to stare at his crotch.

“Expired,” said the voice behind the window. “Go to Window 411”.

Looking around, George noticed that just about everyone in the crowd wore an official ID of one sort or another:

AOL. Student Advisor. Food Stamp Councilor. AT&T. Social Services. Hospital Admissions. Tag Agency. Cable Network. City Finance. Department Of Motor Vehicles. Registrar. U.S. Postal Service. Network Administrator. HUD Inspector. Service Manager. Homeland Security. Loan Officer. Building Maintence. LAPD. Event Staff. Human Resources. City Transit Authority. IRS. … the array of ID badges seemed limitless.

Not everybody in the crowd but nearly all of them wore an ID badge.

The crowd edged away from one barefoot guy who seemed to have lost it. He wore a swimsuit and a muscle shirt with LIFEGUARD stenciled on the chest. He kept lifting a whistle attached to a lanyard around his neck, blowing it, and yelling, “Everybody Out! Everybody out of the pool”!

Avoiding that nutcase, George elbowed his way across the room to Window 411. CLOSED FOR LUNCH, GO TO WINDOW 295, the sign there said.

The clerk at Window 295 told George to pick up his application from the counter at the back of the room “Where you shoulda got it when youse first came in”.

George picked up the 18 page application and got in line at Window 93. The clerk there sighed, “These papers must be filled out COMPLETELY. You haven’t filled in your grandmother’s Social Security Number. Can’t get in without all the proper paperwork being filled out. Next!”.

“My grandmother’s Social Security number!” George shouted. “How am I supposed to know that”.

“Computers at the self-service counter” the clerk said. “Look it up, fill out the forms COMPLETELY, then take it to Window 19”.

George stood in the self-service line. He finally made it to the computer station. “System Error 550… error code bX-vjhbsj … Enter password and click hereto contact Blogger Support”, the screen blinked.

Eventually George found Grandma’s Social Security number.

He wrote it on the form.

When he got there, the clerk at Window 19 was on coffee break.

And the line of dead service personnel inched forward from window to window to window to window.

But the big double doors at the end of the room never once swung open.

Never once.

For all Eternity, neither George nor a single one of the others in the Waiting Room ever made it into Hell.

“With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you again”
—— Matthew 7:2