Deep Drive Thru Moment

This morning, I had an epiphany.

I was in the line up for the Tim Horton's drive thru during the morning rush. It was busy. It always is that time of day. It usually moves fairly steadily, and I wasn't in a big hurry, and I really didn't feel like getting out of the car. I was driving my husband to work, so I'm pretty sure I didn't even wear a bra. Nobody wants to see that in the morning.

The line up was moving along all right, but then it stopped. And where was I in the line? I was in that sweet spot where you can no longer back out, but you're not about to go forward anytime soon. Because some idiot who's dumber than a bag of hammers has ordered something stupid like 24 different coffees, all different fixings (not anything easy like double double or triple triple), 18 breakfast sandwiches, and 3 dozen different donuts and muffins. And, he probably forgot to tell them about all his roll-up-the-rim tabs that he's cashing in.

So, I had no choice. I had to wait. That long and eternal wait that feels so darn unfair. Because, yes, it was MY choice to go there, instead of making coffee at home or going to McDonald's or something, but it's THEIR fault because of whatever they put in their coffee to make me agree to long and eternal drive thru waits. And why, WHY, can't I just have a life where I don't have to get up so early and wait in line like all the other robots powered by caffeine?

And then I saw the car in front of me. I won't go into the details, but I knew who was in that car. I had seen it before. It was distinguishable because of the licence plate. It specifically declared them a winner. Yes, a BIG winner. A lottery winner. They won quite a bit, along with a few other people. It was in the papers. Good for them. That must be great.

And then it hit me.

THEY get stuck in the drive thru line, too. It doesn't matter. The money doesn't change it. You can have a nicer house and fancy cars and trips to Europe, but if you want Tim Hortons coffee at 6 am, and you get stuck in the same line up as all of us poor folk, the money doesn't make it better and it doesn't make it go faster.

Being smarter doesn't make it better. Being more popular doesn't make it better. Being prettier and having bigger boobs doesn't make it better. And having more money than anyone else in town, that didn't make it better, either.

So, here's the big epiphany.

Life is like a Tim Horton's drive thru. It doesn't matter who you are, what you have, how good or bad you are, or how much you pray. Sometimes life goes smoothly, but sometimes it sucks. And sometimes it's somebody else's fault, but sometimes it's just bad weather. And sometimes all you can do is wait patiently for the sucky times to end. And hope that in the end, after you go through it all, they made your coffee the way you like it.