just 5 hours

It was quite cold this morning. Definitely below freezing. There were ice flowers on the pavement downtown. The colors in the streets were still very muted and bluish grey when I arrived at the federal building. The lady at one of the information counters had promised an emptry room and no waiting at all last time I went. There were more people here now than the last time. A tripple person line went all the way from the door of the building, through the little heated tent tunnel, which was packed, away from the skyscraper, to the street, then around the corner, all the way down the block. The line was intertwined with a second one, not quite as long, still impressive. The other one was for people with appointments. I had brought coffee and a bagel. I knew that I would have to wait for at least 30 minutes or so. It was 7am and the place opens at 7:30. I should have guessed that the waiting outside would be more of a 2.5 hour adventure, if one can call it adventure to be in a line for such a long time, with barely any progress. The woman behind me was from Jamaica. She had lost her green-card. She had lost it in her apartment, she said, she did not want to admit to it, so she thought that it could be easier to get a replacement. She did not even have a hat on. The old lady in front of me had problems with her scarf. The wind would always unravel it, and because she had so many layers on, it was my job to help her get this thing around her neck. She barely spoke English. She might have been 70. Before we reached the corner, she told me that she would go to... she made a very complex hand movement which probably meant that the place she was going to was blocks away. She never came back.
The strange lawyer types kept coming back. One spoke Spanish and tried to spark up conversations with anybody who looked as if they were latino. (About 70 percent of the line seemed to be.) I did not understand what he was saying. The other guy spoke English. He just walked by the line and repeated something under his beard. It was some sort of: "you can not find out about your application, you have to mail it in, I have the forms for mailing..." very strange. Then there were the guys from photo-stores. It was pretty clear that they had been in this line themselves, maybe not so long ago. One gave a woman who brought her baby in a stroller the advice to just cut ahead and to try to get into the heated tent. Nobody had anything against it, of course. The officer in the tent was pretty unimpressed. He was in a different position than all of us. It was a different man than last time. This one enjoyed his limitless power immensely. If he did not like how somebody outside of the tent was standing in line, or rather not in it, he would simply ignore the shivering hundreds outside of his heated bubble. He would wait until the 100 or so people whom he let in the tent were done with their security entrance and then, finally, open the door for those waiting outside. A bit s taste of animal cruelty, except that we were not animals. None of us. Yet there were big signs on the closed off parcels of frozen grass, reminding us that letting our dogs onto this property would result in a $50 fine and/or a 30 day imprisonment. It was somehow funny.
Eventually the tent came closer. Eventually there was the revolving door. Then there was the shortcut using the escalators. The third floor. There really was no line. My number was 069 not something in the two hundreds. The same clerk who had recently told me that my window had been closed hours before my arrival, gave me a yellow piece of paper and directions. As I was leaving the large room on the third floor a woman was complaining to an officer. He then told her to just come earlier next time. "Some people wait outside at midnight." She must have complained about the cold.
I noticed on the eight floor that I only knew one third of the questions asked by the yellow form. I knew things about me, but this thing asked me names of officers and very special dates. How could I know all that, out of the blue? Would I be sent away again? The lady at window number one calmed me down. It was all okay. I did not really have to know it all. She took away my papers, and all I had to do was wait. That was so simple. I had brought the paper with me and as I was waiting, I had the opportunity to read about some really fascinating events.
It took a zippy 2.5 hours to check my case. (It really is fast.) And so I was a very happy man when I was finally on my way out into the New York sun. The line was as long as when I joined it. I will be back for more, at some other time.