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Wait. This is a thread about EOM.

I thought this was the line at the DMV.

There was a joke in Egypt 20+ years ago when I was there that was hilarious but oh so true.

One afternoon the Egyptian housewife was walking by the gomaya, the government run grocery store. The gommaya was the only place where you could get staples like sugar, flour, butter, and tea without paying the exorbitant prices of the black market. The staples came in just whenever - there was no regular schedule, and no announcements. You basically either went every day or you just hoped you got lucky (or you had a network of friends who looked out for one another).

So the woman is walking by and she sees this long long line. She does what anyone would do in the same situation - she stops and gets in line. An hour or so later, there were a couple of hundred people in line behind her.

After a while, the lady behind her taps her on the shoulder and says "what do they have today?" The woman shrugs her shoulders and asks the person ahead of her. The question went all the way to the front of the line. The first person looked around and said "I don't know. I stopped to tie my shoe, but when I finished there was a long line, and they must be getting something good here, so there's no way I'm going to lose my place in line."

OK sorry about that. It's Friday. I don't have to get up at 5:30 am tomorrow and I'm in a good mood.

Back to translating now.