John M. Scalzi's Weekend Assignment #140: You're Late!

Weekend Assignment #140: Ever been really late to something really important? Share your adventures in tardiness! Yes, if you've ever slept through a flight, or forgotten a date, or neglected to get something out of the oven in time -- with hilarious results or otherwise -- we want to know.

Extra Credit: Do you wear a watch?

Dear John,

I do hope this finds you hale and hearty, a survivor of the American Thanksgiving groaning board and the annual attempt to overdose on tryptophane and touchdowns. This week your insatiable curiosity (a really good thing in a writer, by the way) has lead you down the primrose path, albeit tardily. The real question should be, for someone like me, when have you ever been on time or (gasp!) early? I am chronically late. Some have warned me that I'll be late “... to your own funeral.” So be it. There's far too many distractions in this world for this pea brain to hold one thought for very long (which goes a long way to explaining why I can write technical manuals rather than novels – the extended attention to characterization detail required to bring off a novel eludes me, but I can follow the outline the engineers provide without difficulty, so long as I have a #2 pencil to check off each step).

I alluded to my act of most egregious tardiness a couple of years back in this entry. It was 1968 and I, a callow youth, was facing imminent separation anxiety caused by the ritual known as "walking the boards" at Oxford and so charmingly referred to as “graduation” here in the good old US. My cohorts and I went to a big blowout party the night before graduation down to Jones Beach. There was wind and wine and women and song and we didn't come stumbling in until the late wee hours of the morn, stinking drunk. No parents around, so we left a note for a friend's little sister to wake us at 9 o'clock and off to our alcohol-soaked dreams we went.

Thank goodness for small bladders. My friend's sister awoke with the impending doom of terminal embarrassment if she didn't do some immediate voiding right now. Having accomplished her main objective, she wandered into the kitchen to start a new day, made coffee and settled herself in front of the TV. The news shook her to her core, Robert Kennedy had been shot while exiting a campaign venue through the kitchen and was on death's doorstep in hospital. She was particularly enamored of Bobby Kennedy and the shock and grief impelled her to come tell us (her brother and I) all about it (she'd never found our scribblings on the note on the table.) A glance at the clock on the nightstand revealed the horrible truth – we had overslept. It was already past time to be assembling to march into the gymnasium and we hadn't so much as brushed our teeth or taken a shower. We reeked, we were hungover and we were desperately late for graduation. Mad scrambling, attempting to find the required clothing for the day, hurried gulps of coffee, then screeching tires out of the shady, oak lined lane onto the main drag.

More noise than the Firecracker 400 marked our passage over the tracks and around the way through the Long Island suburbs to the student parking lot. A mad dash, still tying ties and shoes and we were suddenly being enveloped in caps and gowns by a matron, fussing mightily at our dereliction of duty and semblance to brewery workers and Bowery bums. Then the hurried rush to the gymnasium and the horrible realization that they were already handing out diplomas! We managed to sneak into the back of the rows holding graduates, but it got pretty dicey as my name was called and I tripped on my gown as I climbed the stairs to the stage, slamming into the headmaster who, fortunately, had the presence of mind to brace himself against the headlong rush, thus averting total disaster of podium crashing to the floor in a tangle of arms, legs and asses over teakettles. With a withering look and a sotto voce “You're very late, Mister” he handed me my diploma and I beat a hasty retreat offstage to the relative safety of the sea of smiling faces of my graduating class. That's when I saw my father's face.

Purple isn't a becoming look on my family's faces, particularly when accompanied by rage and hyperventilation. Oh yeah, I was in deep kimchee. I didn't stop hearing about my transgression for years. Every family gathering, every dinner with a new friend or lover being introduced to the family and the story of the day I almost failed to graduate was trotted out by my father for all and sundry to laugh over. He turned it into an epic tale and the gales of laughter that accompanied his recitation of events was always at the expense of my own personal brush with purple apoplexy!

Sadly, none of my family who were there for my ignominious moment in the spotlight is around anymore to reminisce. It's a somber reminder of their passing from this mortal coil when I think about the day I slept through graduation. The ironic thing, John, was my father gave me a lovely watch as a graduation present...

Hold your loved ones close and keep an eye on the time – it has a way of getting away from you when you aren't looking.

wil