Your Jesus fish should be revoked....Part I

Let me start by saying that one of my biggest pet peeves is people who
cut in line. (Wal-Mart is not a pet peeve, it goes much deeper)


One of my favorite stories is the time when I was in an airport in a somewhat out of the way Chinese city. After paying the various random airport taxes and wading through the regulations, it came time for me to go through security. When I arrived in China I quickly realized that lines were a microcosm of "who in this general vicinity is the most important/powerful." As the only white person within a 5 mile radius, I unexpectedly won every contest. So, as I walked up to the security checkpoint and got in the back of the "line" I fouled up the hierarchy of the whole gate area. You see, the "line" in front of me looked more like a big mass of people. The businessmen in nice suits were up front, on the edges, cutting in front of everyone. The older people were in the middle, close to the front, using all the dirty tricks they'd learned from decades of Chinese "line" formation. In the back of the line were the young kids and the families who were obviously less well off.

My arrival didn't pose a problem until the first businessman/old person tried to push up and cut in to try to take their normal place in the Chinese "line". One by one, they hurried toward the front, only to see me standing at the back of the line. They couldn't pass the skinny white guy because it would break some unwritten rule, so they all began fighting for position directly behind me. I absolutely loved it. I couldn't help giving the cheesy businessmen/party bosses a quick look of "what the hell do you think you're doing" every time they tried to walk by me. So, for the next
fifteen minutes I relished the fact that I had changed the organizational paradigm of a Chinese airport.

Tomorrow I will explain what this has to do with the title of the post, although you can probably figure it out. Now I have to go get in bed before the "you have to sleep on the couch rule" is invoked.