From The Manse Window
From the manse window
WHO likes queueing? Not me! And I especially did not like standing in line for four and a half hours in Schiphol Airport, with luggage, waiting (and hoping) to have a cancelled flight rearranged.
But it did give me plenty of time to indulge in a favourite pastime – people-watching!
Several hundred people were confined in a chicane in a relatively small place while airline staff did their best to keep everyone happy. The chicane meant I got to spend time next to many people, move apart, and find them alongside me again later.
Of course, people responded differently to this confusing and unexpected situation. There were the loud and vocal complainers – but only a very few out of several hundred people. And their complaining never served to move them any further up the line.
Some people retreated into their electronic devices or plugged in headphones. Others talked. They talked to pretty much anyone who would listen. And those folks seemed to maintain a happy bubble around themselves all the way.
One man, who was suffering from a sore back, refused to let it get him down.
“I’m not in a queue,” he told me, with a wry smile, “I’m spending time with a whole bunch of my new best friends.”
As the airline staff passed out water and chocolate, people who had seen them deal with difficult characters took the chance to thank them for all they were doing.
“After all,” one woman said, “you didn’t make the snow that closed the airport.”
“If I could,” the staff member replied, “I wouldn’t do it when so many people are trying to get home.”
Some kept the chocolate bars she was passing out in their wrappers. Then they quietly passed them to the families with children. People watched each other’s bags when they had to leave the line for a while.
A couple of seats were passed around for those who found standing so long difficult. Phones were shared so people could call loved ones. Advice and tips were passed around.
Everyone waited the same length of time, regardless of how much they had paid for their tickets. One or two sang quietly to themselves, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if a sing-song had broken out.
Stressful times bring out the best and the worst in us, and this was no different. But, after such a long time in line, I was glad to have my good opinion of people confirmed. Overwhelmingly, this situation brought out the best.
It struck me as oddly appropriate that, on the flight into the airport, my movie of choice had been “Dunkirk”.
Waiting in line hardly compares with the evacuation of four hundred thousand men from a beach under siege by hundreds of volunteer sailors, but the Dunkirk spirit has come to be attached to any situation where people in trouble find their common humanity and realise we are all in this – this situation, this life – together.
In a small, but nonetheless wonderful, way, it was present in that long, long queue. And it made the waiting all the more worthwhile
Next week: the Rev. Susan Sarapuk asks who can we depend on?