Just get out of his way, and no one gets hurt.

The rain wasn't coming down as hard as they'd said it was going to, but it was still coming down. That's the way things usually worked. Didn't bother me at all.

It was about 7:30 on Saturday morning, and I put on my coat and headed outside. I always try to get most of my errands run as early as possible on Saturday morning, in hopes of avoiding the inevitable, horrible crowds that start clogging the sidewalks about 9. I lowered my head against the rain, light as it was, and headed for the bank first.

I was in a good mood, for no particular or obvious reason. Chances are the coffee was just hitting me at a weird angle, leaving me a little speedy. It does that sometimes. More often lately than usual.

I reached the bank 10 minutes later, without having much noticed the walk, buzzed myself inside, then moved over to the glass shelf in front of the big picture window. That's where they keep the various slips you need to fill out in order to conduct legitimate banking transactions (or upon which to scribble notes that read, "I have a gun; hand over all your $50s and $20s").

I scanned the slips carefully, looking for one with a blue stripe along the edge. That's the kind I needed, but there didn't seem to be any. All the slips they had either sported green stripes or no stripe at all. Remembering that I'm blue-green color blind, I grabbed one of the apparently green-striped slips and held it up in front of my nose so I could scrutinize it more carefully. Then I squinted at the words printed across the top. Nope, it was green all right, and of no use to me at all.

I replaced the slip where I'd found it, and turned around. There was another glass shelf similar to this one on the other side of the ATM lobby. If one of them didn't have what I needed, the other surely would.

It probably did, too, but I couldn't tell. As I approached the other shelf and those other slips, I began to notice something. (As I've said before, sometimes it takes a while.) I couldn't see what slips were or weren't available over there because the only other person in the bank at the time had parked herself hard in front of them all, spreading herself out?her bags, her papers, herself?in such a manner as to completely block any access.

She had her back to me and seemed completely oblivious to my presence, hard at work as she was filling out slips of her own and sighing a lot.

Now, for the record, when I'm filling out a deposit slip at the bank?even I'm the only one in the bank at the time?I generally try to step to one side, just so I'm not hogging, you know, the whole damn space. It just seems the polite thing to do. This woman clearly didn't hold tight to that notion. Plus, she was sighing a lot.

For most people, the solution to this little problem, of course, would've been a very easy one. Simply approach the woman and politely ask, "Excuse me, can I just reach in there a second and grab one of these deposit slips?" She moves an inch or two, I grab a slip, off I go to do some happy banking.

But it didn't work out that way. Instead, I froze. I knew what I should've done, but two things came to mind in response to that. First, I've made the mistake of asking people in similar situations if I might quickly reach past them to grab something, and believe me, the results are never, ever good. Especially in banks. The people I approach, almost without fail, turn unbelievably snotty, if they respond at all. I wasn't in the mood that morning to deal with snotty.

I also paused because I tried to imagine the scene from this woman's perspective. She's alone in a bank early one rainy Saturday morning. Some long-haired guy in a ratty black hat and coat comes in, shuffles over to where they keep the deposit slips, stares at them for an unusually long time, then slowly picks one up and peers at it for a while before replacing it. Then he turns around and begins shuffling toward her, before stopping dead in his tracks. It just didn't look good. Not that I look "threatening" by any means?but I know full well that my behavior can sometimes appear very odd to people who don't know me. I was afraid that if I took a few steps closer and asked if I could reach around her, she'd start screaming, or stick me with a hat pin or something.

So I stood there a moment, staring in her general direction, before turning around and returning to the front window, where I also stood and stared, as there wasn't much of anything else I could do until she decided to move. I kept glancing over my shoulder to see if she'd moved yet.

This move most likely only made things worse (at least from her point of view, as well as the point of view of anyone watching the security cameras).

After a few minutes, I wandered over to the ATMs to see if anyone had left any empty slips there, by chance. They hadn't, so I returned to the shelf, where I stood and stared out the window some more.

It was taking this woman an awfully long fucking time, and as I waited, I felt my buoyant mood slowly crushing in on itself. I felt myself growing angrier. Why couldn't she just stand off to the side a little bit? What the hell's so hard about that? That's what I do. It seems a small and simple courtesy. Something to help make everyone's day that much easier. But no. No, instead, she stands there like a big dumb ox, doing her banking, preventing anyone else who wants to make a deposit from doing so until she's good and ready. Bitch! Lousy, miserable bitch!

My frustration and rage growing, I went over to an ATM and waited there. I just wanted to get my goddamned banking out of the way and get on with my fucking grocery shopping before the strollers and the stupid people who push them began choking off the sidewalks.

Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity (though it was likely no more than five minutes or so), she was finished. She gathered up all her crap and moved over to the machines. By this time, I was almost too enraged and too frazzled to fill out the forms properly. I moved to where she'd been standing, slapped one of the blue-striped slips (they had plenty of them) down on the glass and began scribbling. I don't know that I did fill them out properly, but I filled out something. I crammed it, together with my paycheck, into an envelope and stomped back to a machine.

I was finished with everything?deposit made, cash retrieved?and was heading for the door while she still stood at her ATM, hopelessly slapping away at the touch screen and still sighing a lot.

See? I thought in her general direction. That's all it takes! Seconds! Seconds!

I got outside, shoved a cigarette in my mouth, and lit it. Man, I was pissed. I paused as I strolled toward the bodega to get some more smokes, and began thinking to myself, Why did that make me so angry? There was no use for that at all. She'd said nothing, she'd done nothing (though that might have been part of it). She probably didn't even know I was there, so wrapped up as she seemed to be in putting her transaction together. Yet I was ready to smash a trashcan over her head because of it. It was a useless and pointless anger on my part.

Recognizing this, I felt the heat in my brain begin to ebb. My footsteps struck the pavement a touch more lightly. The muscles in my back and neck began to relax. Completely pointless.

By the time I reached the bodega where they sell me my smokes for cheap, the anger had melted away completely.