A young woman in a check-out line. She’s a philosophy student with a pending job interview.

Ugh. This line moves like sludge. Look at him. He’s scanning items with all the haste and alacrity of a customs inspector. How long’s it been? I don’t even want to check. I don’t even need to check! I’ve grown at least half an inch of armpit hair since getting in this line. That’ll look good in the interview. Tough enough going in as a philosophy major.

And it’s so Margo Robbie hot in here! What’s wrong with the AC in this store? Someone must have switched it to heat. C’mon, damn you...

[Beat, touches face.]

Oh, no… is my makeup melting? I’ll bet it is.

Well, if you’re going to make me look like a witch, I’ll play the witch!

I’m not kidding. This line better start moving or … a mighty curse will befall you!

[Changes to dramatic voice, gestures while quoting Shakespeare.]

I have bedimmed

The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,

And ’twixt the green sea and the azured vault

Set roaring war…

Wish I could say all this out loud. What’s the old adage? “A tale is in the telling.”

But no, getting busted for witchiness on my way to a job interview -- not good.

[Beat, then takes a step forward, then halts.]

Oh, so now he’s changing the register tape.

Maybe I should go over to that line. It was moving, but … looks like it’s slowing down, too.

What’s the rule about lines? The moment you switch, your old line speeds up and the new one stalls, right? Better the devil you know …

Wait a minute! Isn’t that the Monty Hall problem? On that old gameshow, Let’s Make a Deal, you had to either stick with the door you picked or change to another one. And what was the advice? Change! Yeah… the woman who came up with that was a genius. Oh, what was her name? Vanna White!

No, that’s not it. Vanna may yet win a Nobel prize in letter-turning, but I don’t think solving logic-problems is her forte [FOR-tay].

Mmmm. Mariyn Vos Savant! That’s it. IQ as high as a redwood. And yet, no one believed her answer to the Monty Hall problem. How could switching doors change the odds? But Marilyn stayed calm and firm and was proven right.

You definitely should switch doors, because … that way you win the car!

But why? I mean, there are three doors to begin with. Behind two are goats and behind the other is a brand-spanking new car. So, pick one, and your odds of winning are one in three. But then Monty opens a door and … ta-dah! There’s a goat. Big whoop! Nothing else has changed, so why should you change doors?

Ugh. No wonder people were upset. It makes no sense. So, why should I change?

Hey, what’s going on now? Oh, I don’t believe it. That cashier is shutting down her station. With all those people queued up in front of her. The nerve! Well, at least it isn’t my line. Or the one I was thinking of switching to.

Wait. Is this a sign? Is this Marilyn Vos Savant telling me to switch?

Oh, c’mon, that’s just mystic nonsense. I’m a philosophy major. I can work this through.

Okay, so let’s say I’ve picked Door No. 1. Monty opens Door No. 2, revealing a goat. So, behind either Door No. 1 or Door No. 3, there’s a car. And Marilyn says I should switch… Huhnnn.

Ah! I’ve got it! Monty can see behind all the doors. He’s not picking at random, he’s deliberately picking a door that shields a goat. I mean, there’s no way he’s gonna reveal the car, right? That would be dumb.

So, when I picked Door No. 1, the odds of the car being there were 1 in 3. That means the odds of it being behind one of the other doors were 2 in 3. When Monty opens one, the odds of it being behind that remaining door are still 2 in 3. So, of course I gotta switch!

Except that cashier who shut down is no Monty Hall. True, she reduced my choices to this line or that. But she knew nothing about which line would move faster, so she couldn’t have changed the odds. Therefore … stay? Go? Botheration! I’m getting an existentialist brain cramp.

[Beat]

Like Sartre said, hell is other people. Of course, he was talking about French people. Bien sur. Haw-haw-haw HAW! But sometimes even these fine, upstanding Midwesterners get my goat.

I mean, look at her! Why do older women feel compelled to have a conversation with the cashier? I know. It’s that 19th century agrarian holdover, Nebraska Nice. All well and good back when you only came into town once a week, tied up your horse, and spent the whole day shopping and gossiping. But she’s not going to learn what Saidie did with her old curtains from that dunderhead. Complete waste of time! And looky there, she’s going to pay by check. How quaint. That’ll add another seven minutes to the wait.

Enough. I’m going to try that line. Here goes. Oop. Wait a sec. That old geezer near the front. He’s gonna flirt with the cashier. I can just tell. He’ll end up pulling out black and white photos from his wallet and showing them to her. Pictures of him in the Army, naked from the waist up in some tropical combat zone. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I should just flip a coin.

Hold on! Why even be a philosophy major if you’re going to resort to a random algorithm? Well, pseudo-random. I mean, a coin flip -- that’s deterministic. Everyone knows that. To get a truly random result, ya gotta go quantum.

[Eyes get big.]

WHOA! What if the Many Worlds interpretation is right? Then every decision results in both outcomes. They just happen in different worlds. Somewhere out there is a version of me that picked the right line and sailed through her job interview. And here’s me, stuck in … Hang on! What’s this? I’m up at the head of the line! Finally!

Yeah, just that. Oh, and I'll take a lottery ticket. One of me is bound to win.

END

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