Look at you, twenty-something, wedged in that hallway between the coat check and the toilets, phone at four percent, bass thudding through the wall like a second pulse.
You are annoyed. I know. The line hasn't moved in ten minutes and someone ahead of you is clearly doing more in there than the room was designed for. Your feet hurt. You keep checking the time.
Here is what you cannot see from where you're standing. The girl in front of you just turned around and asked if your lipstick was smudged, and you told her no, and fixed a strand of her hair without either of you making it weird. You will not remember her name. You will remember, faintly, forever, that strangers in bathroom lines were kinder to you than almost anyone was in the daylight.
And that friend leaning on the wall beside you, laughing at nothing, holding your bag so you don't have to? You get so much time with her, right now, that you're spending it complaining about a queue. Whole hours of her, cheap and endless, like they'd always be there for the taking.
I would wait in that hallway again. The sticky floor, the flickering light, the muffled song you'll hear at a wedding in fifteen years and have to leave the table for a minute.
Don't rush it.
You've got nowhere better to be than exactly there, bored, twenty-something, alive, in line.