“No one in this country sells ordinary table lamps,” Sherry said. “There’s a new department store in Belize City that’s having a grand opening tomorrow. They show lamps in their advertisement and I want two of them.”
I caught a seven o’clock flight to try to beat the crowds to the grand opening. And there was a crowd. Forty people, mostly women, were in line in front of me by eight waiting for the doors to open.
A young lady walked up to another standing ten spaces back from the front of the line.
“Keisha,” she said. “I’m just going to stand here with you.”
“Oh, no you’re not,” someone said.
“Nobody jump the line here,” someone else said.
The young lady got the message and went to the back of the line near me.
A well-dressed man in his forties strolled to the head of the line and stepped in front of it.
“No, you don’t,” said the lady at the front. “No line jumping.”
“It’s all right,” the man said. “I’m just going to. . . .”
“No line jumping!”
Someone grabbed his arm and pulled on him and someone else shoved him. He stumbled back to the end of the line. With a determined look on his face he set off to the front again.
“No line jumping!” people screamed.
This time someone punched him in the face as they drove him back to the end of the line. Blood trickled from a cut on his eyebrow.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I’m O.K.” he said, “but if they hit me like that again I’m not going to open the store.”
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