Are You Late or On Time

Are you someone who is late? Recently on The Today Show they asked how you handle someone who is late on a regular basis. I do not normally tweet to them but jumped on. Here was my response. How shocked was I when they retweeted what I wrote. So my question is how do you handle someone being late. I have friends who are 20 minutes late and that does not typically bother me. If they are coming over I just assume they will be late. But, if we are going somewhere together than my anxiety builds up. On the other hand we have a family member who is hours late and it drives me insane. They say they will be ready at 10am and at 4pm you are still waiting. It sends me into crazy land. Here is the difference. I am someone who is ready on time or before. Which means my children are ready for you at 10am. We have arranged our life to wait for you. It is hard because the kids get excited and countdown to your visit and then become disappointed that they are losing time with you. So back to my tweet. I wrote that I am just the opposite. If you invite me for dinner at 6pm, you will probably find me down the street parked about 5:30 waiting until it is time to be at your house. I am almost always really early. Part of it is thinking it will take me longer to get to my location or what if I need to stop for gas or a child needs something. I will never forget a friend telling me it was rude to be early. It makes total since that it would be rude. You are getting ready for company. Rather you are doing last minute straightening or cooking it is harder when people are there to visit. So now I try to be on time or at least closer. I say that but if I have a doctor’s appointment I am always super early. Which does not make since, you know they are going to have you wait anyways. The funny thing is after tweeting yesterday that I am always early I broke my own rule. I had to drop kids off at a friend’s at 9am. I realized I was going to be early so I stopped for gas so that I would not be too early. The next place was to be at another friend at 10am for a party. Knowing I was going to be super early I stayed at my first friends talking longer than planned and guess what? I WAS LATE; I was 7 minutes late which to me is like being an hour late. No one noticed because it was not a time sensitive event. I had to laugh at how funny that on the day I tweet about being early I am late. My earliness is so normal that my friend has a name for it. She calls it “Pam time”. If I tell her I will be there at 9am and arrive at 9am she is calling me. She gets worried because I did not arrive at 8:30 (Pam time). I love friends who understand how my brain works. So are you early or late to events? Do you have friends in your life who are early or late? Pamela