the comedy of tardiness

I’m not really sure why my friends do it to me but they seem to like keeping me waiting for them whenever we go out. Mind you, I’m not pertaining to any specific person. I am not also trying to make an impression that they aren’t good friends. I am merely pointing out the common denominator of my friends: tardiness.

My as-though-keen-observation of this doesn’t mean that I don’t get tardy myself. I usually get tardy in morning schedules since being a little bit insomniac, I sleep quite late in the evening or even early in the morning and I find it difficult to wake up at 5 am. It is not a secret that I had a number of tardy days when I was working in Chiang Kai Shek College. It isn’t also a secret that even before working in school, I had attended some of my undergraduate classes just whenever I would feel doing it. But of course, tardy though I was, I didn’t neglect my jobs and responsibilities—but that is according to my biased point of view.

But when it comes to social appointments, I think I get very much excited that I got to the venue some minutes—or even hours—ahead before my friends can say “Oops…sorry I’ve just woken up.” In these situations, I often blamed my overly excited nerves—thanks to the coffee! After all, it isn’t my friends’ fault that I can’t think of nothing else but meet them.

There were times that my friends themselves appointed the schedule. I, thinking that they would definitely stick to their given time, would try my best to get at the chosen area on time or a little after the schedule so as to appear not that excited. But I would just find myself in my solitude, waiting for them to arrive. Sometimes I succeeded making them wait. I wanted to congratulate myself for those times but I usually found myself guilty.

Now, upon reading this, you may think, “if this is the case, why do you still consider them as your friends?”

Before I answer that, let me just explain my purpose in writing this: to share my amusement at the comic denominator of my friends and not to spite them of their inaccurate wristwatches. It is so comic that no matter how hard I try to summon a negative feeling from the deepest recesses of my heart toward this un-“friendly” behavior, I find myself laughing and asking why.

Probably that is how they trust me that I will be on time no matter what. Probably they know  that I will be waiting. I really cannot confirm these unless I would have my friends' brains in a box.

I am sure, though, that the only thing I can surely give my friends is my time. I am not the type of person that anybody can depend on for material needs. I am not also an interesting conversation partner as I claim to be. In short, I can really be a bore. They are really doing me a big favor in sticking with me (accdg to Chinese Culture humility is power...even though it's only false humility, it is still power. haha). This reason enables me to just whistle and look for things while I wait for them endlessly during our appointments. 

Aside from that, I have this subconscious thought that I have recently realized: they aren't my friends because they come on time. They are my friends because they have somethings, values, characteristics that I lack. I bear their tardiness but I am quite sure that they bear more things about me and my kaleidoscopic personality.

It still is funny though, that out of all the possible common denominators that they can have, I only see one: tardiness.