How to Be Late

Some people are neat, organized, and Early. Others are natural Latecomers.

Earlycomers often view Latecomers in an unfavorable light, completely missing the advantages of practicing Lateness. As a latecomer, you are free to go at your own pace and never feel rushed. (Only Earlycomers, or those striving to become Earlycomers feel rushed.) Lateness helps develop an imperturbability of mind; you never have to worry about being late, because Lateness is now your goal. Surely such a diminishing of mental and physical stress is a good and healthy thing!
Enjoy your newfound abilities in this often-neglected field. Maybe you are natural Latecomer already!

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• an event to attend
• several salt-shakers full of large-grained salt

1. It is an advantage to have small children. They cause sufficient delay to result in a desirable degree of Lateness. Six children can result in much more delay. If you are careful about mis-managing your time, your family may even become one on the few who are regarded as Perpetually Late!

2. Do not begin to prepare for departure more than ten minutes before you should leave. If you plan ahead you might possibly be on time, or even worse, Early! That is the worst fate to befall a Latecomer, though with proper precautions it should rarely happen.

3. Another helpful hint: forget that you have to go somewhere until about half an hour before the appointment. Sometimes a Professional Latecomer will even forget about an engagement, being informed the next day of his negligence. That is the height of a Latecomer's career; to be so late as to miss his meeting altogether!

4. Forget about the daylight savings time clock change; though it is a strange feeling to think you’re only five minutes late, but are instead an hour and five minutes late. The drawback to this method is that it will only work once a year. (NOTE: be careful that you remember to "fall back" an hour each autumn, or you may end up with the Earlycomers. This happed to a Perpetually Late friend of mine, and it came as quite a surprise to him.)

5. Here's another great Time-Wasting tip: leave a light on in the car to run the batteries down. This simple trick can waste many minutes! To consume even more time, get everyone in the car and buckled up before you announce that the battery is dead. There is sure to be a five minute delay while everyone gets out, and another delay as they get in again once the car has been started.

6. Have you ever tried this one? As you are nearing your destination, realize that you have forgotten an essential item. The resulting drive back home is sure to almost double your travel time. If you were already mis-managing your time and started late, you have a very good chance of achieving a desirable degree of Lateness.

7. For an early morning appointment, you can neglect to turn on your alarm clock. The best time to wake up is approximately fifteen minutes before you have to leave. Besides being Late, you will look half asleep, thus achieving a Total Latecomer Look.

8. Here is a good one to use if none of the above suggestions apply: Move as slowly as possible. I have seen this Time-Waster executed beautifully by many people. It is quite simple. Perform your actions as slowly as you can, pausing in between each one. Children, especially, are masters of this technique.

9. If you are a really serious Latecomer, or hope to become one, you may set your clock half an hour back, but I would almost classify that as Illegitimate Lateness, or lateness without a reasonable excuse. But, I have heard of people who turn their clocks ahead a half hour so they will be Early, so why not back, to be Late?

[xtraordinary]

on 11/10/2008 Very cute article - 5 stars!

[Thims]

on 11/8/2008 One of the memebers of my band could have written this piece! Nice and timely article! ;-)