Musings

7 1/2 years after moving here as an adult, I went to the DMV to change my registration. I thought 3:30 on a Wednesday would be a good time to go, but clearly I wasn't the only one with that idea. After about an hour and a half of waiting (and haughtily laughing at all the people being turned away for not being prepared), there were 2 people ahead of me in line and I realized that one of the many forms I had spent days collecting was missing a piece of information. I decided to stay and see if I could get away with it. Another hour or so waiting for my number to be called, I get to the counter to find I cannot in fact get away with it. I'm not quite sure why you need to have a license, passport, 2 proofs of social security, registration, insurance, and proof of residence to transfer your tags, but you do, and I didn't. Yet somehow, in the midst of this annoyance, the DMV employee walked away and returned with a little card that was a fast pass! Go directly to the front of the line! Any time you come, no matter how busy! "You have everything together but that one paper, and I feel bad no one told you before this you needed it and you waited all that time." All of that waiting and annoyance was erased by one tiny kindness.

So today when I went to the grocery store, there was another interminable line of people getting essentials (doritos and bush's beans) for the hurricane. I'd been waiting about 10 minutes and there was 1 person in front of me before we got to the register. An older woman with 1 item approached the man in front of me and said "I've never done this before, but I have to be somewhere in 15 minutes and I just have this one thing..." and he said no. So she walked away to the end, about 5 people back. I thought about it for a moment, then caught her eye and motioned her in front of me. Maybe tomorrow she'll do the same for someone else, but regardless, it always stops me in my tracks a little to realize how easy it is to make people happy, and how amazing it is that it happens so infrequently.