The waiting people

November 6, 2008

Chicago O’Hare International Airport

Half an hour priori to a person announcing boarding over the intercom, 70 percent of the people at Gate M-9 rose from their seats in unison, as if something inside each of their minds was triggered at the same time. They straightened their pants, grabbed their bags and headed to the closed terminal door.

I checked my ticket. No zones were designated, but there it was, my seat. Each person was designated a seat. Still, most of the people were gathered around the closed door, behind the first set of ropes.

My Polish friend had mentioned it: “You can tell Polish people because they’ll always stand in a line, even if they don’t know what it is for.” I thought it was a joke, at least an exaggeration. But there in the airport, still in the United States, I saw the country I was headed to, I saw Poland - in the lines, in the people waiting long before any announcement was made.

Eventually, the woman at the gate announced the rows that were to start boarding. The back of the plane first, where I was sitting. I grabbed my bags then, stood up, and headed for the front of the line. I was too late. The line was there. I was in the first group, but it didn’t matter what had been called. The line was impenetrable. They called other rows and still more rows. I couldn’t get in, I had missed my chance. Their line had done away with order, boarding in a certain fashion. They’d been passed up once before, and if they had any say in it, by God, they wouldn’t let it happen again. They’d be stubborn; they’d make their own rues to get where they wanted, where they needed. Like a herd of bulls tearing down the walls of the chute, no one was going to tell them how they were to get from point A to point B. Except they didn’t move; they waited – still and protective of their place in line. They waited, not for their row to be called, but for their chance to walk on. When it was another’s turn, they didn’t much care. They were already in line; they’d been waiting. Sure, maybe things are done differently, but this is how they do things and so that’s how it will be done.

When the plane landed, I told my friend.

“I do it, too,” she said. “You have to understand, Lindsey, when we used to be a communist country, there was nothing in the shop except vinegar, ok? To get something, you had to stand in long, long queues for whatever, toilet paper or sausage. That’s instinct now.”

She thinks it will be the Polish instinct until the generation of her grandchildren.

Since I’ve been here, I’ve seen lines – at the movies, on the trams, on the subway, in the grocery store.