Where did the time go?

I mean this quite literally.
I was at a parking garage, about to insert my ticket into the machine, to be followed by my payment. There was one person behind me.
A moment -- two? three? -- later, a guard came over to help me. "It's okay, lots of people have trouble with it" only I wasn't doing anything with it and by then there was a line of like six people behind me. The worst part is I wasn't even lost in thought. I just, somehow, trailed off . . .