Example of Sadness: ATM

Today I sat in my car behind another car, at a drive-up ATM. The woman ahead of me had not gotten close enough to the ATM, so she had her door partially open and was sort of curled around it, leaning out and pushing buttons. Her window was halfway down, too, so I gathered that she had first assumed she was within arm's reach of the ATM, and when she realized she was not, she opened her door but was too close for it to open all the way. It was a very sad sight, the saddest thing, I decided, that had happened to me all day. I watched with a lot of interest. I imagined that she was me and that I was watching myself, thwarted at every turn by this giant, beeping machine. This is usually how things are translated into 'sadness' in my mind--I insert myself, gluttonously, and the sadness becomes a narrative, a reverie, so absorbing that there is no real 'relief' when it is 'over' because it has already gotten inside, permeated whatever reality I'm in--in this case, a busy shopping center, in my car, from where I could hear the beeps of the buttons as the woman pushed them. Why are they so loud, those Bank of America buttons? They are really loud. They are proud American buttons, blaring out freedom and democracy. The woman was taking a long time. I imagined that the ATM was telling her she had insufficient funds. Interminable sadness for this woman. When she drove away and it was my turn, I made my car get so close to the ATM that my side mirror almost touched it.