Seriously... I'm Kidding

conducted among friends, family, and cable repairmen, I discovered one thing to be true: Most people are always late.
    I don’t know when it became socially acceptable to be late. I imagine it started with the person who coined the phrase “fashionably late.” What a terrible expression that is. I don’t know who came up with it, but it was obviously someone smart enough to trick people into thinking that something is stylish when it is definitely not stylish. I’m assuming it’s the same person who invented culottes.
    I remember one time Portia and I invited a couple over for dinner and they showed up two hours late. You read that right—two hours! One hundred and twenty minutes. Seven thousand and two hundred seconds late. We told them to come at 7:00, and they got there at 9:00. By the time they showed up, we ran out of firewood for the fireplace, our candles had melted completely down, and I was capital D-runk. To be fair, I was drunk at 4:30, but that’s not the point I’m making.
    If someone invites me to a dinner party and they say to be there at 7:00, I’ll show up at noon. And if they’re not ready for me, I’ll use that time to go through their medicine cabinets. I would never be late because it throws off the whole plan for the evening. Everyone schedules dinner parties the same way. You call it for 7:00. You expect people to trickle in between 7:00 and 7:15. There’s about eighteen to twenty minutes of small talk, some appetizers, and by 7:45 it’s time to eat. You eat for about an hour, drink a magnum or two of Chablis, have a heated discussion about politics and/or the quality of the Look Who’s Talking sequel as compared to the original, and by 9:00 you’re yawning so people know it’s time to find their coats. When people don’t show up until 9:00, everything gets pushed back far too late. By the time we were ready for dessert, I was ready for bed. Literally. I had put in my night guard and taken all my clothes off.
    I understand that sometimes people are going to be late. I can deal with someone being ten minutes late or fifteen minutes late. But once you hit an hour, you better have a really good excuse—like, you gave birth to a baby in your car. And if you’re gonna be more than an hour late, you better show up with a litter.
    What I’ve realized is that people don’t care about common courtesy anymore. How many times have you held a door open for someone who walks right through it without saying thank you? How many times have you let someone into your lane of traffic without receiving the courtesy wave? I mean, who among us hasn’t picked up a drifter only to be disappointed after they steal all the money out of your wallet when you thought they were looking for gum? We’ve all been there.
    And not only are people rude, they have no boundaries anymore. I was in a public ladies’ room recently because the Port-O-Let that’s usually part of my motorcade was in for repairs. And the person in the stall next to me was talking on her cell phone. In the stall. In public. Not a care in the world. On the one hand, I was happy for her because I found out her son made the honor roll and her husband got a promotion at work. On the other hand, I didn’t need to know that her rash turned out to be nothing more than bicycle chafing.
    When I was growing up, you couldn’t take your phone anywhere because it was tethered to the wall in the kitchen. If you were on the phone, you were only on the phone because there was nothing else you could do except maybe flip through an old cookbook or rifle through a junk drawer full of pennies. You couldn’t even bend down to tie your shoe or you’d get choked by six feet of phone cord.
    Now that we can take our phones practically anywhere, everyone is completely distracted while they’re supposed to be having a personal conversation. Have you ever been talking to someone and you can tell they’re not paying attention to what you’re saying at all? They pretend they are because every few seconds they say, “Uh-uh. Uh-huh. Oh really? That’s so neat.” And you’re like, How is it neat that I have the flu?
    It’s crazy to me that people don’t realize we can hear what’s going on in the background of wherever they are. I know you’re watching television because I can hear Anderson Cooper and I know he’s not your roommate. I know you’re in the grocery store because I can hear that grapes are on sale. I know you’re at the gym because