Prompt

I saw the daily prompt in my feed last night but I’m afraid I haven’t been very prompt in writing a post about it. I had a post to write for our doll blog which I wanted to be published soon after midnight our time and I was watching a very one-sided game of cricket between Pakistan and the West Indies.

Still, as they say, better late than never. That may certainly be true of blog posts, better to put one up late than not at all but when I speak of the other kind of prompt I’m not so sure I agree.

Everyone is late once in a while and I am no exception. Sometimes it’s not our fault, traffic, unexpected events, getting lost, waiting for other people. Sometimes it is our fault. When David and I used to go to shopping centres we would split up to pursue separate interests and make a time to meet up. I was nearly always at least a few minutes late coming back to him because I was busy looking at Barbies in K Mart, Target or Big W. Luckily he never minded, he was very patient about that sort of thing.

Some people are never prompt though. Naomi and I often spent literally hours at Adelaide Railway Station as teenagers waiting for a tardy relative to meet us. This was before mobile phones remember; although we probably wouldn’t have had them even if it wasn’t. We’d lose time when we could have been at the shops or doing whatever else we’d planned to do. Why did we wait? Well, we always thought she’d show up on the next train so we’d wait another half an hour and then another (the train only came every half hour). We thought it would be rude not to be there when she arrived. The most annoying thing about it was that when she eventually turned up she never acted like she was really sorry about the inconvenience. She knew we’d wait.

Eventually, though we got fed up with it. We’d wait for half an hour in case she’d just missed the train and was on the next one and then we would go. We figured if she didn’t have the manners to be on time why should we waste our time waiting?