The Origin of Lines

[Photo: Big Frank Dickinson: Osaka, Japn]

There are many ways of categorizing humans in which they are separated from other animals, mammals, and primates: the tool maker, the user of language, or the imaginative one looking into the future. However, here's a new one that definitely is unique to humans: standing in line. No animal will willingly stand in line for any reason whatsoever: food, shelter, entertainment, sex, . . . nothing! Human are the Queuing Animal. Look at all the times/places that humans will line up: to get on a train, plane, or taxi; to get a hamburger, a pizza, or a shot of vodka; to have someone look at their bunyans, moles or warts; to buy a TV, a hammer, or a quart of milk; to enter a theater, a restaurant, or a church; to register for class, withdraw from class, or enter class . . . and so on and on and on. Big Frank wonders when the first line was formed and for what reason. Surely it was not a group decision of perhaps a group of hunters descending on a carcass and standing in line to hack off a piece, nor the consensus of a tribe to queue up in order to drink one at a time from a narrow pool of water. We see lots of cartoons on the first users of wheels and this is typically put back into the fuzzy time when people lived in caves so perhaps that was when the first line was formed. Surely there must have been some kind of power structure to enforce it and some kind of order or enforcement. What did they first line up for: water, food, or perhaps something even more substantial and essential . . . but what?