Trapped in the post office going postal

I was in the post office for almost 4 hours today - 4 HOURS! OH MY GOD - I now know the definition of "going postal". I swear, if I had to spend another hour in that place, I'd twist off and start killing people. I needed to get a passport, and I had to go in person since it'll be my very first passport. So...

The passport office in my local post office is open M - F 10:30am - 2:30pm. I got there just after 10:30am and there was already a line. Ugh... this doesn't look good. The handwritten sign said to take a number and get in line. Umm... sure, but where are the numbers?? The nice lady in front of me said I had to get it from the counter lady (thanks!). she was a busy counter lady too I should point out - she had a family of 5 at her counter trying to get passports. Only one of the children spoke English and was translating for the parents. I stood there for a few minutes, waiting for a break in the conversation so I could ask for a number. No luck. Finally at a quick pause, I meekly said "excuse me, I need to get a number??" The postal lady said, "I know you're there. I saw you standing there. Did you see me talking??" Oops! Okay, don't piss off the postal lady! Point to remember. I backed up a step and waited a few more minutes until she gave me a cardboard square with #10 written in black marker on it. So - back to the end of the line I go. Thank God I brought a book. After an hour without moving up even one space, I plopped my happy ass on the floor, leaned back & got lost in my book - 45 minutes later I was still sitting in the same place, and now my butt was asleep. I got up to stretch my legs, work the feeling back into my butt, and check the line in front of me. The good news was that the postal lady had worked her way through 3 more people and we were now on # 5 - good, halfway to me! The bad news was that numbers 7 & 8 were families with 5 people each. Ugh... still 13 more people... so I sat down again and tried to lose myself in my book & ipod. That was proving to be difficult because 1) family #8 - a large group with piercings and tattoos and emo kids - sat down in front of me. I had a front row view of mom's bra straps and Victoria's Secret brand underwear, and the chubby teenage daughter's whale tail (translation - the top of her thong was sticking out of the top of her low rise jeans showing a good bit of black lycra triangle & chubby skin). It was really distracting. 2) around the same time - sometime between 11:30am and 12:00pm - a hispanic mom with 2 boys lined up behind me. Normally I could care less but her older son had absolutely no comprehension of comfort zones and kept moving waaaaaay too close for me. He kept bumping up against me. I have a very large comfort zone and do not like being crowded - this was not a good thing. The younger son was about 3, and was really sweet, but got bored very quickly. He started running around, bugging his brother, making these obnoxious 3 year old noises, and teasing his brother over and over in Spanish. I don't know why, but it annoyed me even more because I couldn't tell what the insults were. Around 1:00pm-ish, he started in with "mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom" (you get the point)... OH. MY. GOD. I wanted to scream "Mom, I swear to God, if you don't acknowledge him, I'm going to club him over the head." Then the kids in front of me got bored and the brother & sister started annoying each other. I don't know what started it, but all of a sudden there was hollering about getting cooties and then someone else giving the infected a "cooties shot" -- "circle circle dot dot, now you have the cooties shot!" Umm... okay. Really now, they're trying to kill me. They're trying to drive me insane so I'll run screaming out of the post office and be one less person in line. Okay - calming breaths... in and out... read your book... only 3 more numbers and then it's your turn... you've only been here 3 hours, it's not THAT bad... could be worse - could be at the unemployment office... I was able to tune out the mongrels for another hour or so, made it up to page 180 in my book (that I started this morning), and made it until I was next in line - whew # 9! Almost me!! Woohoo and it's only 1:30pm!! Then the toddler in the line next to me started in on her ABC's - "oh how cute she is! Look how she's circling her mommy while singing!" Okay, once was cute, twice still cute but getting old, FOUR times with no end in sight was torture! I need to write the military as a suggestion for interrogating prisoners. "They won't talk? try a two year old singing the ABC's on an endless loop! That'll break anyone!" So now I'm chanting - "just one more number, just one more number, just one more number" under my breath. Trying to keep my eye on the prize. If I get through this, I won't have to come back for a whole 10 years - yippee! Okay - head down, eyes in your book, and ipod turned up louder to drown out all background yapping - you can do it. You can wait just a FEW MORE MINUTES until your turn! Then it happened... I couldn't believe it! It was MY TURN! Trumpets started sounding - I swear I heard a cherub chorus singing! The postal lady became the most beautiful postal employee I'd ever seen, with a glowing aura around her. My salvation - she's my ticket out of this hell! I stepped up to the counter, answered all of her questions, listened and yes m'ammed at all the correct places, gave her my money, raised my right hand and swore I was telling the truth on my passport application... then it happened -- she stamped my application in triplicate. Told me something about waiting 4 - 6 weeks for my passport to arrive, and said I was free to go... WOW... really?? you mean it?? OKAY!! I walked out of there in a daze. I was starving, sweating (cause it was freaking hot), and absolutely brain dead. I got the hell out of there as fast as I could, grabbed some fast food on the way home, and plopped my ass down in front of mindless tv for a few hours to recuperate. OMG that was an exhausting trip to nowhere...