A Rant on Tardy Behavior

Yesterday I got called out for arriving to pick someone up on time. On time. I said I would be there around 6:30, and I hadn’t been to the person’s house in a long while, so naturally because I was ready beforehand and wasn’t doing anything, I left a little bit early to ensure I wouldn’t get there super late. I know some people aren’t like that, and getting places late is of no consequence to them, but for me, it has always been one thing that greatly irked me. So said person made me wait in my car, feeling shameful for close to ten minutes while they did whatever it was they needed to in preparation for my arrival. It just set the night off on a bad note, and while we quickly laughed about it and moved on, it still offended me that I was called out for being on time. When did it become the standard to arrive everywhere at least fifteen minutes behind schedule? I know that in my life I accept this of other people, but I do not customarily do it myself. I don’t like the way it feels to be late places, and as a general principle, anyone who gets somewhere early leads a calmer and more collected life. There is no drama or fear, and no stress involved with hoping you won’t awkwardly walk into an event so late it isn’t even funny, or anything like that.

One other example that comes to mind is this time before I could drive when I asked my friend’s mom if she could take us to this meeting. Well I would cut them some slack for the dilemmas of the day, but they are late everywhere, so I don’t really think that this one time was any different than always. So the people took forever for us to leave, and I knew the place of the meeting was at least thirty minutes away, so when we left to get to the place we were going with fifteen, I knew it wasn’t going to be good. We ended up arriving at the meeting one hour late. I was so embarrassed that I didn’t even want to go in at that point, and I convinced my friend that we shouldn’t. I had never in my life missed more than half of a meeting before. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t go, but the fact I had put on nice clothes, and done my hair, and blocked out half of my day to go to this meeting, and then thanks to something not related to me, I was incredibly late. It’s just one of those instances in life that is so frustrating.