Punctuality Challenged
While in Michigan this weekend, I witnessed firsthand my sister and mom's total inability to be on time for ANYTHING!! My sister was late picking me up from the airport: "We will be there in one minute" (they weren't even close, she told me afterwards), "Mom was wasting time so we left the apartment really late" (Mom didn't come with her to pick me up!!). Two years ago she was late to her own wedding rehearsal!!
Mom is even worse because she gets really annoyed when we try to speed her up. While living in China, I don't ever remember going to a movie on time with her. Even now I literally have to harass her every five minutes AN HOUR before the movie start time. Even then we still barely manage to get seats sometimes. This weekend we were 15 minutes late to the portrait studio because she and the sister were trying on different clothes (don't ever go to Sears, we got pretty bad customer service and the photo quality is pretty shitty).
My reactions to their utter disregard for punctuality range from indifference (I don't really mind waiting a few minutes at the airport), to amusement (sister and Jian missed Amtrak by one minute; they were late in meeting up with the grandparents in the airport both on their arrival in AND departure from the States), to resignation to outright rage (too many to recount). I swear to God, they are so oblivious to time they would be late to Judgment Day. It's as if they have forgotten what it's like to be somewhere on time, or God forbid, 10 minutes before an appointment. There are times when we are in such a hurry to get to some place because we know we are late that I feel like we are a bunch of villagers trying to escape from the roving Mongolian calvary of Genghis Khan.
While in Michigan this weekend, I witnessed firsthand my sister and mom's total inability to be on time for ANYTHING!! My sister was late picking me up from the airport: "We will be there in one minute" (they weren't even close, she told me afterwards), "Mom was wasting time so we left the apartment really late" (Mom didn't come with her to pick me up!!). Two years ago she was late to her own wedding rehearsal!!
Mom is even worse because she gets really annoyed when we try to speed her up. While living in China, I don't ever remember going to a movie on time with her. Even now I literally have to harass her every five minutes AN HOUR before the movie start time. Even then we still barely manage to get seats sometimes. This weekend we were 15 minutes late to the portrait studio because she and the sister were trying on different clothes (don't ever go to Sears, we got pretty bad customer service and the photo quality is pretty shitty).
My reactions to their utter disregard for punctuality range from indifference (I don't really mind waiting a few minutes at the airport), to amusement (sister and Jian missed Amtrak by one minute; they were late in meeting up with the grandparents in the airport both on their arrival in AND departure from the States), to resignation to outright rage (too many to recount). I swear to God, they are so oblivious to time they would be late to Judgment Day. It's as if they have forgotten what it's like to be somewhere on time, or God forbid, 10 minutes before an appointment. There are times when we are in such a hurry to get to some place because we know we are late that I feel like we are a bunch of villagers trying to escape from the roving Mongolian calvary of Genghis Khan.
posted by Gary at
5:30 PM
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