I am always early. Sounds awesome, in a head-of-the-queue-for-concert-tickets way, but this benign description doesn't admit the crazy of the problem. I hate the idea of being late so much, I'll turn up 20, sometimes 30, minutes before I'm supposed to be anywhere.
My fear of tardiness is visceral, verging on White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland full-blown panic. While I have things somewhat under control these days, have figured out what "6.30 for 7'' means, I've spent a lot of unnecessary time in airports and surprised dinner party hostesses in their dressing gowns more times than I care to mention.
The reason goes back to childhood, when I was very fast to learn to talk, very slow to learn to tell time. Something about the big hand and the little hand, the weird phrasing of "quarter to'' and "twenty to'' confused the hell out of me and the more I tried to puzzle it out, the more complicated it seemed.
My younger sister Veronica took this opportunity to mock me mercilessly, constantly asking, "What's the time, Mr Wolf?'' and howling with laughter at my attempts to answer. I retaliated by tickling her until she wet her pants. As a consequence, I am pathologically premature and my sister experiences tickle-related LBL (light bladder leakage). Quite frankly, it serves her right.
Such is my reputation for super-earliness, friends know I will always, always, always arrive before them. If the Tamster and Tall Gorgeous Blonde turned up at the cinema/beach/pub and I wasn't there, they'd immediately start ringing the police, A&E and the morgue, knowing something had gone horribly wrong. "Short and blonde? Answers to 'Scooter'? Well, she did ...''
As I see it, the world is split into the chronically late and the dictatorially time-observant, two personality types destined to fraught coexistence on the space/time continuum. Although, there is something to be said for the smugness experienced by the one who waits, immaculate, as the persistently unpunctual burst through doors a la Kramer from Seinfeld, sweaty and dishevelled, or pelt along the footpath as the theatre bell dings and the ushers start closing the doors, hair flapping, clothes rumpled, skidding to a halt while yelling, "Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!'' Not a little pleasure can be had from assuming a Mother Theresa air of benevolence to deliver the lie: "Have I been waiting long? Not at all. I only just got here myself.''
Why are some people always late? Do they think it's cool? I know women are supposed to keep dinner dates near-fainting with hunger at the bottom of the stairs, only so they can sweep down them to cries of "Darling! You look gorgeous'' (and anyone would look spectacular after two hours of primping; it takes less time to base-coat a car), but the fairer sex does not have a monopoly on habitual last-minute-ness.
"There are men and women out there who simply cannot leave the house until after they're supposed to have arrived at their destination. Perhaps it's a kind of inertia: they know what time it is but they simply can't pull themselves together, or decide on shoes. Perhaps they are deep thinkers, creative navel-gazers who have a tendency to lose themselves utterly in what they're doing, until the cries of the baby they missed seeing born alert them to a change in atmosphere. Whatever the cause, I know this life-lived-down-to-the-wire business would give me such anxiety, I'd have to be put on horse tranquillisers.
Even the concept of arriving with only minutes to spare, no time for the loo or lipstick-and-teeth check (after that time I went to a job interview with half a cup of pesto in my teeth, I'm a little paranoid. Weirdly, I got the job) gives me heart palpitations.
Whatever my nuttiness around time, I have always held myself above those whose sense of promptness is faulty, seen myself as slightly better than them. Until last week, when I struck the International Date Line while on holiday in Rarotonga. Arriving the day before I left, I thought I would return similarly rich in hours. Or something. It was all very confusing. Turns out 2.25am Tuesday is actually more in the vicinity of Monday night.
By the time I'd figured it out, I'd missed my flight by a day and a-half. Jobs had to be cancelled, interviews rejigged, and my mother, who waited for me at Momona for four hours, placated with promises of spectacular birthday presents.
The shame blush that covered me persists. All I can say is, I take it all back. Better late than never.
