"There are tacos here."

"Tacos?" I repeated.

"And not just any tacos," my friend said. "Life-changing tacos."

"I'd stay in line all night for life-changing tacos," I said.

"It's the American way."

I thought back to all of the things I'd waited in line for over the years. They'd never come with free tacos, but the desired results were worth the exposure to the elements and the sore feet.

In college, admittance into the highly desired broomball league was doled out on a first-come, first-served basis. Broomball is a game not too dissimilar to ice hockey, only instead of a puck, there is a ball, and instead of skating, you run on the ice, and you're also very likely drunk. I've never sustained so many injuries, and I have a second-degree black belt in tae kwon do. But still, students began camping out 48 hours ahead of the sign-in window opening. It was always late autumn in Ohio. Some years, there was snow on the ground. Half the boys wore shorts and shouted out things such as, "If you can't handle the cold, you don't get the ice!" Very poetic for someone about to experience frostbite. My friends and I placed our comforters on the ground and cuddled through the night, drinking spiked hot chocolate from a thermos that other friends kept filled, doing tag-team errands for us throughout the night. We were a team on the ice and acted like a team to get one of those coveted spots. Classes were missed, pinkie toes nearly lost, but we played every year.

"Will there be free tacos every day?" I asked my friend.

"I dunno," she said. "You should see these lines. If there are, I think our taco man will go bankrupt."

In high school, sleeping out for concert tickets was a rave unto itself. Teens and 20-somethings stretched out for a quarter-mile, bringing camping chairs and boomboxes and illegal substances. You were guaranteed to hear someone playing acoustic guitar. You were guaranteed to hear glass breaking. You were guaranteed the opportunity to kiss a stranger and exchange a phone number. I loved those nights camping out for tickets far more than I enjoyed the concerts themselves. The magical experience was in the waiting. The reward was in choosing to show up.

Lines are easy when you're young — when missing sleep is no problem, missing class is fun and missing work comes with a consequence you can swallow, when there aren't children at home who need to be tended to, when participation can be a joy rather than a stressful juggling act.

When I was a kid growing up outside Washington, D.C., school was closed on voting days because our schools were where you went to vote. To compensate, great efforts were made to accommodate people getting to the polls, including child care and transportation. It's never been a fair system. It's always been one made more available to some. And I've never lived in a region where the line becomes unattainable and the wait untenable.

A handful of years ago, Dunkin' Donuts arrived in Los Angeles. I, like most of my transplant friends from the East Coast and Midwest, had missed the coffee and Munchkins. Dunkin's arrival in LA was so exciting and desired that lines formed the day before it opened. On its second day, my boss sent me on a mission to bring everyone on our team coffee and doughnuts. She didn't care how long it took.

An hour into my waiting in line, an older woman behind me tugged on my shirt and asked, "What are we in line for?"

I was gobsmacked. I told her we were in line for doughnuts.

"This long line for a doughnut? OK, if you say so."

I asked her why she was in line if she didn't know what the line was for.

"I saw a line, figured it was something important."

She stayed right behind me in line until she got her doughnut.

In the absence of government rulings to make voting easier, quicker, more accessible and more equitable, I can't help but wonder what we, the people, can do. Bosses could encourage employees not to show up until after they've voted with the same conviction as telling them not to show up until after acquiring coffee. Bands could show up to play to lines. Camp counselors could entertain kids. Folks with cars could offer to drive strangers to and from polls. I know all these things are happening, but we need more volunteers to make the wait a part of the experience, worth the potential frostbite just to participate.

This is oversimplified and idealistic and perhaps even a bit desperate. But if we all spend an extra hour bringing ease to the lines, we may get a few more folks like doughnut lady, who waited hours simply because she "saw a line, figured it was something important."

Please help the vote. It's the American way.

Katiedid Langrock is author of the book "Stop Farting in the Pyramids," available at http://www.creators.com/books/stop-farting-in-the-pyramids. Follow Katiedid Langrock on Instagram, at http://www.instagram.com/writeinthewild. To find out more about her and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.