A stop at window number 8 to get a number for myself. It rained on the way there, it's true that I need new pants, what number is on the display? There's no way to know when my turn will come. It's no big deal, but I make a mistake right away and need to go back and pick a new number. Are you the owner of the vehicle? Yes, what did you say? Yes.

A man with a similar helmet stands across the room. He crosses nearer to me, he's wearing dark cargo pants like I enjoy sometimes, and his have a Levi tag, and I'm jealous. Where could he have found them? A good looking man shows up in the next window and I smile, and start reading the numbers. Will he be the one who helps me? Now someone is looking at me. Look around, there are plenty of people, no one should be looking at you, it's imagination. Except the feeling stays and someone whistles a few notes of their personal theme song and I think 'what is my routine, then, what do I normally do?' Wanting to fall into my own pattern, I remember that I don't have one beyond being sullen and with no energy left inside me to show anything to anyone. That reality makes me sad and then I know I've certainly done it again.

Notice the woman sitting at the far end of the room, window 13, and immediately have our numbers put together on the display. She asks me questions and her voice gets skeptical. I have to pay 20$ to pay my ticket with community service. There is a minimum amount of service acceptable. It will all overrun, no, it's perfectly a fit but her skeptical voice has disturbed me and made me feel human and productive like she likely is but I am not generally which is re-enforced when I walk away without my business done as I had intended it. 'Oh, forget that then, that's fine' my head says to a woman who expects me to say something like that, my feet turning away from the task I was there to accomplish. I did not have another parking ticket on the way out, at least. I'm left with a craving for strawberries.