Security line at the airport. I take off my shoes and raise my hands so a tube from Aperture Science can scan me. Check-in line for the airplane. Waiting, I relish in the approaching memory of elbow room. The pathway down the center of the airplane B-lines toward the crap cubby.

Registration line at the con. They don’t buy my ID. It takes two hours to get my badge. Line for the men’s room. For one weekend, two-thousand role-players are secretly welcomed into the brotherhood of empty stomachs and full bladders. Waiting for the flush, the slow exit.

VIP line outside dealer’s room. My legs are protesting because they know the endurance training my arms are about to suffer. I get the figurine.

Line for the exclusive ticket pick-up. I miss out on two panels, eat a smushed chocolate granola bar and replay the series finale from Battlestar Galactica in my head again. I’ve waited a season for the con. Five state lines and six hours ago I could have done this in my bed.

Line for the autograph. The men I’m sandwiched between both stand too close and smell of wet towel and Red Bull. Guy behind me coughs into my back. Guy in front unearths a wedgie. Still, above knee aches and below migraines, we wait.

Face-to-face with a woman only I would recognize on the street, I lay the figurine on the table and hand her a Sharpie. Her smile is stuck to her face like a pizza slice on a frat house ceiling, holding strong against gravity but not for much longer. I wait for her to sign it before blurting out the quote from her show.

I ask if she gets the inside joke of her signing this particular model, if she’ll get the reference from the Internet meme and fan-made video. I wait for her head to stop tilting in thought. She doesn’t. She didn’t get the joke when the guy in front of me asked her the sign the same figurine.

After ten hours in lines, I swing my elbows.

I can’t wait to go back.