Unprepared People

I think these are somewhere in between a Seinfeld "What's the deal with..." or a Carlin "You ever notice that..".

A year ago I renewed my drivers' licence. I looked up on the internet what was needed to do so and I downloaded the form and filled it in and had it signed before I even got to the registry office. Since my birthday is July 1st, the first long weekend of the summer, and since I falsely assumed that if I got there at a reasonable hour before closing that I could simply waltz in, I was shocked that people were lined up out the door. Other people were filling in forms in line and some even did squat until they were right up to the person at the booth.

People who made a valiant effort to fill in the forms were guided by the office staff. Those who got all the way to the booth having done nothing were told to go fill out their forms and they had to go right back to the back of the line.

When I finally got there the clerk said to me "It's prepared people like you who get screwed by people who put no thought into it".

Other people (a friend pointed this out to me) line up at Starbucks and put no thought into what they might like to order until they hear the words "can I help you?". They may be related to the people at the licence bureau, or one and the same.

I used to see this beautiful young woman on the bus most mornings. In places where I see the same people every day I mentally give them all nicknames like "Janet" (beacause she looks like a "Janet", whatever the fuck that means), "Mary Tyler Moore" , and "The Snow Bunny" (a lovely young redhead I first saw all bundled up in the dead of winter".

One that I used to see that I am thinking of here I called "Boobsie" because they were huge and either fake or in a push-up bra and she wore tight sweaters and made it clear to the universe that she wanted them looked at by as many men as possible. Anyway, Ms. "B" would often miss the bus, I would see her running as the bus pulled away, or if she didn't, she would be totally winded as she would just have made it in time. Ony then would she remember that a fare or pass was required to ride the bus. She would sit down and root through her purse and find either a ticket or the correct change. Then, she would get out her make-up kit and start applying all of her make-up (I guess while us bus folk were important enough to have her breasts on full display for us, her face was another matter). I was amazed at the way she would stick a mascara brush right in her eyelashes, while the bus (and as would have her boobs had they not been fake or pushed-up) bounced up and down. She managed to do it every day!

With some planning in her life, maybe she could have gone places - maybe even a job at the licence bureau or Starbucks!

TF