Talk Thursday: I’m Late

My mother always taught me it is socially appropriate to arrive five minutes late. Which is fine for say pregnancy, a class reunion, baby showers, private parties, but not appropriate for say, Thursday night dinner. Mom. Just saying.

My mom is always on time for Thursday night dinner with the girls, except when she has to pick up my grandmother. Which is every other Thursday night (the night we meet) because at the age of almost ninety, my grandmother has no concept of time and has usually had too rousing a day at her pinochle club. Hey, it happens.

Headline: Pride goes before the fall.

Finding a parking space on an early fall evening in Old Town isn’t an easy feat. My grand mother suffers from advanced osteoporosis and, while she can walk, doesn’t walk far well. So imagine my delight to arrive for our 6pm reservation at the Waterfront Depoe (the best restaurant in Old Town Florence, heck in Florence) and find not one, but two parking spaces being vacated. I stood in one parking space and watched the second being filled, hoping, watching, fingers crossed that they’d soon show so they could park within a reasonable walking distance for my grandmother. But then a car (not considering my fat ass any sort of an opponent) forced me back on to the sidewalk and the space was gone.

Ten minutes later, as I worry our reservation was gone, a third space opened and yet still no mom and grandmother. In the long run (20 minutes after our reservation) they show up, I’d just watched the fourth and fifth spots open and instantaneously fill up. Being slightly peeved I comment, with probably abruptness, that had they been CLOSE to being on time they’d have been able to park near the restaurant, instead of mom having to drop grandma off at the curb and then driving a block and a half away for a parking spot. My standing in front of the community’s most popular restaurant reminiscent of a rejected, stood up wallflower on date night is of no consequence. They’re probably thinking I’d been use to it.

Flash forward two weeks. It’s fifteen minutes before I leave for our Thursday night girls dinner out and I’m at work. The phone rings – a big client calls. Calls again, vacillating whether I know how to spend her dollars. And then calls again. A fourth call and $1900 order later I arrive at the restaurant, ten minutes late, to hear my grandmother tell me, if being on time is so important to me, I should try being on time. Note she was sitting nice and cozy in the booth of a local, not too busy – there is always parking in the front –Mexican restaurant, discussing the weather with my mother.

I tell ya, being righteously peeved comes back and bites me in the considerably large butt every single time.

Sith,
Cele