On the virtues of standing in line

When I lived in England twenty years ago, one aspect of British life was very appealing to me—the queue. I loved the orderly way in which the British lined up for buses or to purchase tomatoes (to-mah-toes) at the greengrocer. Patiently, with great decorum, the English wait in line. It is an art form.

This queuing up, as they call it, fills a deep need of mine. In most areas of my life, I am notoriously untidy, scattered. But when it comes to waiting in line, I can become militaristic. There’s comfort in a well-ordered queue. Even if you find yourself near the back, you feel confident that if you follow all the rules, waiting patiently for the bus or the clerk to wait on you, your patience will be rewarded. There’s no anxiety, or concern that somehow you’ll be overlooked. You take your place and wait with quiet confidence.

In England, if someone broke a queue, you could almost be sure the person was a foreigner. I don’t recall ever witnessing a Briton disrupt a perfect line. When I was there the British were too polite to call attention to a line-breaker. They may “tsk tsk” quietly, but I never saw anyone raise a ruckus over a broken queue. It was as if the line-breaker, just by virtue of having committed this grave social sin, had condemned himself. Nothing need be said.

Prior to England, I lived in Italy, and the Italians had no regard for queues. When a bus arrived at the stop, they flooded through the door. I was virtually swept into the bus in a tide of bodies. There was no pretense of a line, and, because of that, I didn’t feel much anxiety. When there are no hard and fast rules, there’s also less concern about injustice. Interestingly, though it was chaotic, we all seemed to make it through the line.
Most disconcerting to me is waiting in line in the U. S. Perhaps because we’re a melting pot, we seem to have no consistent standard of waiting in line, no clear and fast rules. Sometimes, we’re like the British, patient and orderly. Sometimes, we’re like the Italians, a mad rush of bodies. Most times, we’re somewhere in between.

Waiting in the cafeteria line in high school is one of my bad memories. The line was always long, and lunch time short. What I found most troubling was the attitude of some of the more popular kids. If one popular kid was in front of the line, a flock of their peers would suddenly appear and cut in front of the rest of us, those who lacked status in the schoolyard. Sometimes, they wouldn’t even bother to acknowledge us; occasionally, one would smile our way, and say, “you don’t mind, do you?” We never voiced our objections. But inside I seethed.

Like me in the cafeteria line decades ago, many of us become indignant when people break the established norms and expect special treatment. Those of us who are willing to wait patiently in line may consider ourselves more civil, more sensitive to inequality, more considerate of others. However, we reserve our indignation only for “average” Americans like us. Celebrities are not expected to wait in line.

In fact, many of us wait in line for hours just to see them. Typically, people willing to wait in line are almost always considered inferior in status to the privileged. And that distinction is becoming increasingly more pronounced. Waiting in line may soon become an activity strictly for the economically disadvantaged. Disney World, for one, has developed a system that if you buy a special pass (for a fee prohibitive to the average American) you can avoid the long lines for its attractions. There are other ways that the more privileged among us, not celebrities per se, can bypass lines—through “first” or “business” class status on airlines, in hotels, etc. These days, it’s becoming common for the wealthier among us to pay others to stand in line for them.

Standing in line in the U. S., and elsewhere, is rarely just. Indeed, those who are downtrodden find themselves most frequently in long lines—for a bed in the homeless shelter, a bag of groceries in the food pantry, or a vaccination at the health clinic.

In developing countries, waiting in line for scarce goods and services is a fact of life.

The injustice of lining up runs the gamut from the trivial (my high school cafeteria) to the profound (lines of refugees awaiting care for their most basic needs).

Jesus showed great concern for those who couldn’t make it to the front of the line. He noted the grave injustices he witnessed. Indeed, he stated clearly that in God’s kingdom, the first would be last, and the last would be first. When it comes to the world’s resources, we Americans are among the most privileged, the first in line.

When serious about building God’s kingdom, Christians seek justice for those who are, economically, socially, and politically forced to the back of the line.

Mary Hood Hart lives with her
family in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina. She can be reached at mhhart@diosav.org.