Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The Painful Depression of the Concession Stand

The trudge to the concession stand is always my moment in the grand tradition of Murphy's law. With temperatures climbing to a point they should be measured in Kelvin, I have to go for the water run for the entire damn row. Now I try to approach the area, which is wedged into the back of the stadium and the edge of existence, with the eye for the fastest line. I never succeed.

There are those who stand in lines so close you could survive the winter on body heat, and I try to respect a little distance from the next person, and this leads to a problem. Since the stand is along a major stadium pathway I end up the gatekeeper to a steady flow of traffic. By the time the line moves I've seen the entire north stands pass in front of my face. It's moving slower than Christmas because there is a man with a vicious stutter in front of me ordering Thanksgiving dinner for him and his mixed Catholic-Mormon family and the high school volunteer behind the counter is having a hard time with the complexities of the drink menu. I finally get to the front feeling like I've given blood and she charges me less than the sign indicates. Some sort of weird karmic irony.

The next time I ventured to the stand I chose a line on the opposite side of the first slow moving line and the tide had turned, in the wrong direction. The lady three subjects up wanted to lolly gag around about the choice between the pretzel and the hot dog. I wanted to strangle her with her stylish sash. But as I got to the front of this line what seemed like two months later, they were out of what I wanted. Damn you concession stand. I hate you.

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