I’ve now had both the required vaccinations to protect me against covid19. The first shots were administered at a a local university and the lines were long. I’m guessing there were a thousand of us waiting both indoors and outside on a drizzly day in March.
Surprisingly, the whole experience showed me how polite and goodnatured people can be! Complaints were minimal and rudeness was nonexistent. Some folks were joking with eachother. Sometimes they were breaking out of line to chat with eachother. The most remarkable person of all was a young man with his grandma who may have been six years old. He stood in line with us for over four hours and never fussed! (He wore a Spider Man hoodie, and I did see him gazing up at a light pole as if he longed to climb it. ) Later on, as we were still in line, I told his grandma I had noticed his patience and I wouldn’t complain since he was such a trooper. A man waiting in a wheelchair was happy to break the monotony and chat with a youngster, so they smiled and chuckled about the red hoodie.
I looked around with a growing sense of pride. These were all my neighbors, perhaps a thousand of them. Folks I never see all together at once. I’d been in line a couple of hours before this occurred to me, a fine and cheering thought!