Promptitude - why it's not really a problem being a bit late

Promptitude

Tardiness, or lateness, is a pet peeve for my wife and a slew of other people I know. But I confess that I think concern for being prompt, or promptitude, is further evidence of a lack of intelligence.
Now, let’s set some ground rules for discussion. Being on time isn’t a bad thing. Showing courtesy and awareness of other people’s time is a virtue of sorts. Nor do I condone being fashionably late or obnoxious about meeting appointment deadlines.
So what is the subject? Perhaps an illustration, maybe even an anecdote might prove insightful. It’s 6:00 p.m. on a typical weekday evening. I have been inside the door for all of twenty minutes. In that time I have managed dinner for two of my three children and me, though we are in the process of eating it, and I have to be in Temple, a town forty minutes away, by 7:00 p.m. to retrieve the third child. (This occurs at least once a week, in some manner, because my wife is at work, or because she is doing something else and it’s my turn to be the loony.) The important thing is that I’m not complaining; my wife carries a disproportionate amount of the chartering children duty.
If I eat like a human, I will have to get in the car with my vegetable side dish in a coffee cup, eating with a spoon while I wheel in and out of traffic at sixty miles an hour. Furthermore, the dinner dishes are unwashed and the leftover food is slowly coagulating on the table, counter, stove, or floor. It’s worth it though, isn't it --- because I will now arrive in Temple on time!
On the other hand, I could eat like my nine-year-old, rifling food into the general vicinity of my mouth, fully aware that I will be compromising some 20% of the meal by mass and volume. In this case, I will have time to clean up most of the dishes and the food, and I won’t have to drive one-handed on the freeway.
In both scenarios, I will arrive on time! But my psychological state will be awful.
How about opting for possible choice number three? I can eat like a human, clean up the dishes and the kitchen in general, drive two-handed, and arrive at 7:10. Ten minutes late can provide me with peace of mind, and no coagulating food on the stove.
I’m willing to risk being labeled ‘tardy.’ My wife, and a majority of people I know, will not take the same risk. Those ten minutes of impromptitude may render them unworthy of other people’s respect or something.
I give myself a five-minute or so late window. If I’ve arrived at my destination within five minutes of the due time, I consider myself punctual. And to be truthful, I rarely slide outside the window. Yet those five minutes can turn my wife and her compatriots into nervous wrecks.
I am not exaggerating when I tell you that my wife sometimes begins worrying about being on time a full twenty-four hours before the scheduled event.
Time is valuable. We should spend as much of our time as tranquilly as possible. Fretting about mere minutes is stupid in most cases. Of course, we should leave early if the appointment involves a train or plane departure. Of course there are deadlines we should make responsible provisions to meet. But most of our fussing over keeping appointment times is not concerned with crucial arrivals and departures. No, most of our appointment times are arbitrary.
“Let’s meet at seven,” our friend or colleague suggests. “How about 7:12?” you should say. If you plan to get there at seven, allow for the five-minute window, and arrive at 7:07, your friend will applaud you for being early. Unless your friend is an insensitive jerk who believes the five-minute window begins at 7:12, and so doesn’t arrive until 7:17. If that happened, I would never speak to that former friend again.
I was joking. Of course, I was joking. My one brother is an inveterate ‘tard,’ as I call us. Jay is especially tardy if the appointment time is a.m. A few years back, when we were golfing on a fairly regular basis, we tried to get out as early as possible so the rest of the day wasn’t affected. Jay was usually the last one to arrive. And he often didn’t show up at all. In fact, I don’t think the lateness would have bothered me if I had known he’d eventually arrive. You see, I would usually go early, getting in some time on the putting green in the dark, just because I am a morning person, and I like to practice before teeing it up for real. Tardiness is one thing. Failure to show for a confirmed appointment is unforgivable. [I also should mention that I have figured out Jay’s idiosyncrasies to some extent. If Jay says he will definitely be somewhere, he will be there, and often on time. However, if he expresses even the lightest bit of doubt about his appearance, breath holding is a bad idea. He won’t show, or if he does, he’ll be inordinately late. I imagine in these cases – when he eventually shows – that he’s been agonizing over the situation for ten or fifteen minutes, and the mulling time has caused the delay.]
Comics have often joked about our American tendency to time our trips, and to look for shortcuts to travel or travel time. But I generally drive pretty slowly. I don’t see what I might gain if I cut the trip by five minutes, or even ten.
Consider these scenarios.
“Yup, had I taken the route you proposed, I would have arrived at the pig roast at 11:18.” The listener waits expectantly. “But I cut down Breakneck Boulevard and across the Frenetic Freeway. I avoided Serenity Station Drive altogether, and made it here by 11:13.”
“Read the odometer and the chronometer and weep, Rand McNally. I risked life and limb for me and my family, and I got five free minutes coming. Somebody better start paying up.”
Now, I admit that I plan travel routes and times too. The difference is that I am shooting for the trouble-free trip. I want it as short or as quick as possible, same as everybody. Yet if I can stay on a lonely two-lane highway and sacrifice ten minutes, I’ll do it. Those ten minutes translate into two or three more Springsteen songs, and I get better scenery to boot.
But it’s not just travel time. Suppose you’re going to dinner with friends. Three couples are scheduled to meet at 8:00 p.m. It’s now 7:15 and I haven’t showered yet. The trip will take about twenty minutes. My wife, brandishing her hair dryer like an instrument of destruction, orders me to the personal hygiene booth, the shower. She has already begun panicking.
I shower, shave, and --- take care of other things --- and sit downstairs with my car keys in my hand at 7:45. My wife, bile up to her right tonsil, issues final instructions to the children/babysitter, and then storms to the car. (If you’ve been following the consumption of time, you realize that we don’t have a chance of being on time!) Out of courtesy, I drive a bit faster than normal. We arrive at 8:05 p.m. and my wife apologizes profusely to the other people. I blame everyone but myself for the delay, but I really don’t care at all. What happened in those five minutes that really matters? Will those five minutes prove crucial in any way? Calm down. Listen to the music. But try to be on time.
Punctuality isn’t to be avoided; rather, it simply isn’t so critical that one should rush like a maniac to compensate for a poor start. I can’t think of one important event of my life where I recall if I was on time or not. I was there when it counted. And I can’t think of any major regret prompted by my own tardiness. Life is too short to rush through. When I rush, I notice nothing. I yell at people I don't even know and who have offended me in no particularly significant way. My blood pressure goes up, and sometimes I even get sick to my stomach. By contrast, when I take my time, and everyone else's too, I arrive safe and stress-free. I yell at no one, unless it's the kids or my wife who remind me every thirty seconds how late I am. When I rush through things, the day is shorter. When I stay calm and slow, the day is longer. I'm already on a time-life limit. Why would I want to hurry up and minimize my experience of it?