THTooLongDon'tRead

Last week I was waiting for a friend at the SMN train station, at the appointed meeting spot. I arrived early so I am wandering a bit and absorbing the sights and sounds of the hectic station. I walked into the main ticketing hall, and while still a hub of frenetic activity, it is more calm than times past. I noticed that they are still managing the crowds with a take-a-number system. This immediately transported me back many years and trips ago. The whys and whats that prompted me to take a number elude me at the moment, but I must have needed a reservation or a reserved seat back when that required a special audience with an employee of the Ferroviaria dello Stato.

I had taken my ticket and joined the cheek-to-jowl rabble all waiting with varying degrees of patience. The progress was glacial at best. At a certain point, desperation and nature required me to abandon my spot to make a beeline back to my nearby hotel. I tossed my number onto the top of a nearly full bin and left the building.

Once back at the hotel and feeling relieved and refreshed, it struck me that perhaps I should have kept my number slip. Based on the pace of progress, I could possibly yet to be called. With the hope that is stronger and more resilient in the young or simple, I indeed ventured back to that hall of perpetual waiting. I approached the bin into which I so nonchalantly tossed my impossibly high number earlier and was rewarded by seeing still near the top of the bin. With a hand steadier then than now, I extracted the ticket with precision that I never had as a child playing Milton Bradley’s “Operation”. I was further rewarded to see that I was close to being called forward to make my transaction! 

If this story must have a moral, I hope it is something like: if playing the numbers, it is a waiting game, and you must be present to win!