written on October 1, 2014
What a fun word – tardy. I don’t remember the first time I ever heard it, but it got used a lot in high school and college. Even though it tends to be used primarily in an academic setting, it came up a lot when I worked at the Apple Store. Of course tardiness was a frequent problem at the Apple Store when our store first opened. I laugh about it now, but management was never a fan.
Now the word pops up in my head quite a lot – I usually tell people I’m late for something, but in my head the word I use is not late, it’s tardy.
Turns out I’m tardy a lot these days. For everything. And I don’t really understand why. Sometimes I blame the kids. And sometimes it really is because of them. But I’m an adult, I choose when to walk out the door. The kids may try to prevent that from happening, but if they do prevent it, it’s because I let them. No one to blame but myself.
I used to be late all the time in high school. Again, for everything. Never for school or for class, but for meeting up with friends, for dates with girls (which does not score you any points, by the way), to work (usually within the 5-minute window that the retail employers I worked at allowed) and anything else where I had to be somewhere at a set time. In high school I usually kept it to only 5 or 10 minutes, but now, it’s more like 15 or 20.
Some days it’s traffic. Since most of my jobs in the last three years have been within 10 miles of home, I don’t usually drive the freeways around LA during rush hour, so I always underestimate how long it will take. Every year it seems there is more and more traffic on the roads. The past few days, trying to drive to Cedars every morning, I’m amazed at how long it takes. It’s about 17 miles, and it’s taking me 90 minutes to get there. When we first moved into our house in the valley, the same trip would take just over an hour. So in two years another 20 minutes has been added to the trip. Yikes. Congestion anyone?
Some mornings I get on the road late because I have problems getting out of bed. I tend to be really tired and sluggish, due to the medications or the insomnia or just generally being tired.
Some days when I’m ready to leave I decide to do one more “quick” thing before I go – like paying a bill, or putting away some clothes, or folding some laundry – all things I know I could do later but really won’t feel like doing later. Not that I feel like doing them whenever I’m leaving, I’m just trying to be helpful around the house.
I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to figure out why tardiness is a continual problem for me. Maybe I need to accept the fact that this is who I am – I’m just a tardy person. I know there are others like me – not everyone can be punctual, all the time. Although I do know some of that type - I envy them their punctuality.
I just hope that next Tuesday I’m not late to the surgery – that will definitely not be a good way to start the day. We’ll probably have to get on the road about 4 am to make sure there isn’t any traffic getting to Cedars. I dread the 3 am alarm that morning – no sleep for me that night. At least the anesthesia will take care of that part for me. I just have to make sure I show up on time to take advantage of it.