My stomach was rumbling and I was hungry for dinner. I had worked all day, and I could feel the momentum still in my body, fast and churning, like I was moving even though I had stopped. But I had to stand still in a line to wait for a sub for my family’s dinner, and the line wasn’t moving anywhere. I could feel it immediately. I famously hate waiting. Famously, at least in a family of three. If I go to a restaurant and they say a table will be ready in twenty minutes, I walk.
Boardwalk Subs was bright in that flat fluorescent way that makes everything look a little too honest. I watched the meat slicer move back and forth, steady and mechanical, and once I stopped resisting it, the sound was almost calming. I could hear other people placing their orders, listing toppings, changing their minds halfway through. A group in front of me could not decide what they wanted. They kept pausing, asking questions, and reconsidering like the menu was going to reveal something new if they stared long enough. My chest tightened. My stomach growled. That familiar internal scream showed up right on schedule, the one that says this should not take this long.
I had nowhere else to be.
That was the part I kept trying to outrun. Not the line itself, but the feeling of being slowed down. I looked at my shoes for a second, then lifted my eyes again and let my attention land where it wanted to. The slicer. The glass case with the veggies and condiments. The quiet shuffle forward that never came when I wanted it. The smell of bread in the air. I could feel my body trying to launch ahead of me, drafting an escape plan that did not exist.
The harder I tried to get out of the moment, the more the tightness ramped up in my chest. So I did something small instead. I stayed. I let a breath fill my lungs. I stopped negotiating with reality. There was no emergency here. There was dinner at the end of this line, and a room full of people doing the same ordinary thing I was doing. The group in front of me deserved the time it took them to decide. I was not the only person with a day behind me and a stomach that wanted food.
I could still feel the impatience. It did not disappear. It just did not get to drive. The slicer kept moving. Someone laughed at something near the register. The line shifted forward an inch, and I followed it, still hungry, still human, still here.