Sunday, November 14, 2010

The "ish" factor - learning to chill reaches a whole new level!

So, it was my birthday last week. No big deal - it was relatively uneventful - just the way I wanted.

But something happened. It was one of those moments that made me go 'hmmmm'. Not quite a light bulb moment because it wasn't earth shattering or anything. But nonetheless it was significant enough that it made me stop and think for a moment..

Wait. This story requires a little bit of setting up.

First, MY schedule runs on a clock that is different than anyone else's. Sometimes it is Newfoundland time. Sometimes there's a time zone that is, oh, about 15 minutes behind the rest of the world. When I book appointments, they're done in half hour window, as in "I'll meet you between 3 and 3:30". That's smart for me. I aim for 2:50 and I'm pretty damn sure I'll arrive by about 3:20, which puts me right in the window of time I booked, thus saving me from dreaming up an excuse about why I'm late.

Second, there's my Dad. If he says he'll arrive at 3:00 p.m., he doesn't mean 3:01. He doesn't even mean 2:59 (although he's been known to arrive a minute early and throw me right off). And it doesn't matter if my watch has a different time than his. Only his watch counts. It's like he synchronises it directly with God himself every morning. "Tina-Marie, if you arrive at the train station at 7:31 to catch the 7:30 train, you've missed it." (Heaven help me, I've hear that a million times in my life, and the part where he annoyingly calls me by my real name could be the topic of a whole other post someday!) I've already told him that when he dies, we're going to schedule his funeral for 11:00 a.m. and then start at about 11:12, just so I can see if he makes the coffin rock back and forth in post-mortem agitation.

Now, about my birthday. Tuesday November 9th at 9:00 a.m. I received a phone call from my Mom (Dad can't hear on the phone so well anymore so he gets Mom to call and he just yells at her in the background if she diverts from the message he's trying to send me.

"Happy Birthday Tina."  "Thanks Mom," I reply.

"Dad and I would like to take you to lunch today, but we're gong to a meeting this morning so it will have to be after 12:00."

"Ok, that would be nice" I replied.

We agreed on Swiss Chalet at Yonge and Green Lane.

And then it happened.

We're making our plans and I hear Dad in the background:  "We think we'll be done by noon, but why don't we say 12:30ish in case we're running a little late".

Now, 12:30is coming out of my Mother's mouth would be no big deal.  She and I speak the same language on this one. But.... DAD? 12:30ish?

The planets are no longer aligned and all of the absolutes in this world have been altered forever.  Hell, I 'm left wondering if the earth is, indeed, round!

ISH has never been in my Father's vocabulary. I'm just waiting now for snow in July. Better yet, I should go and buy a lottery ticket!

Or, maybe, just maybe, he's learned to chill and enjoy retired life. Honestly, I think this behaviour falls into the realm of an anomaly. Or maybe its just one of those things that will happen on the 9th of November every year.

1 comment:

Westcoast Walker said...

This one gave me a good chuckle! I can vividly picture how this would all unfold. Must be a sign of the end times, or at the very least the manifestation of some strange cosmic anomaly, though I could be wrong(ish) about this.