time

So I got to the Park and Ride in plenty of time today. I'm supposed to get there by 7:15 and I was there right at 7:15. But my carpool, aka Mom and Dad, were not there. I am not the most punctual person in the world, but I am rarely more than 5 minutes lates. Lately I have been making a concerted effort to be there on time.

Anyway, they were not there. So I waited. And waited. At 7:35 I called my Dad and he answered the phone this way:

"Yes, we're on our way. I'll be there in a minute and your mother is right behind me."
---note to you environmentalists: We normally do not take 3 cars. My parents drive together and pick me up at the Park and Ride and we carpool in. I like the environment. But today my mother had to leave work early so Dad and I are riding the bus home.

"Ok," I said. "I just wanted to be sure I wasn't supposed to ride the bus in."
The night before my mother had called and spoken to me for about fifteen minutes while I played Star Craft on the computer. When I got off the phone with her my wife asked what we had talked about and I could not, for the life of me, remember. So I was legitimately afraid that she had told me to ride the bus.

"No," he said. "I'll be there in a minute."

I wasn't exactly mad. I've been late some too, so I wouldn't complain. But it seems to me that whenever I am 5 minutes late I get cross looks. If I am ten minutes late, which does not happen often, I get a phone call and sometimes cross remarks about respect. But when Mom and Dad are late it isn't their fault. And when they are on time and I am already there I hear comments like last weeks, which actually came from my mother, "Did you get some good traffic?" Which translates to: "How are you here early?" I wanted to say, "I'm frequently early. If you were frequently on time you'd know that." But I have been late some, and it is not uncommon for them to be at the Park and Ride before me. Still, there is a double standard there.

So Dad drives up 5 minutes later and hops out of his car. I don't look at him, (because I'm a bit upset) and he says, "It took me forever to get your mother moving this morning. I swear if I hadn't been there she'd still be asleep. I got in the shower and when I got out she was still in bed. Then I got her up and she went through her usual ritual of letting the dogs out and getting breakfast, even though she was twenty minutes late."

Incidentally, he is not one to talk. Dad is rarely late himself, but if he is not going somewhere and you are he has absolutely no qualms about talking and talking to you so that you are late. And then he just shakes his head like you don't understand the importance of time. So his ranting was only serving to make me more irritated.

Then he walked around to the other side of the car, though I still had not looked at him directly, and he said, "Time means nothing to your mother. She doesn't comprehend the disrespect or the inconvenience associated with making people wait. It just doesn't matter to her." By this point I was staring at the asphalt; just plain mad.

Then I looked up and everything changed. I looked at Dad and saw that his glasses had been taped together at the bridge. Imagine those Revenge of the Nerds movies with the guys taping their glasses together, only instead of using masking tape my father used Scotch tape, and not a small amount. The tape was so bunched up that it stuck off his face almost an inch. He kept ranting about Mom, but I was too busy trying not to laugh.

~sigh~