I am NOT a morning person. It’s always been a struggle for me to pull myself out of a warm comfy bed and face the day. This means I’ve always been late to start whatever that day entails. Growing up, I was late for school nearly every day. At one point, my teacher solicited help from a classmate who lived only a few houses away. She stopped by my house every morning in an attempt to get me to school on time. All that accomplished was making her late for school too.
I really do try. Really, I do. I have a rather elaborate system right now, in an attempt to get myself going each day. Every morning, my clock radio starts with playing public radio at 6:00 a.m. I listen to the traffic report, weather, and news. It doesn’t really inspire me to hop out of bed, though. Around 6:10, a lamp in the room turns on, bathing me in light. At 6:15 the radio is replaced with a blaring cathedral bell alarm. I reach over and hit snooze. Granted, I’ve moved the radio so I can’t reach from a laying position – I have to sit up and reach over the nightstand to snooze, but I do. Five minutes later, a travel alarm goes off, beeping repeatedly.
I still rarely manage to get out of bed before 6:30 or 6:45. Bad days I’m up at 7:00 or even 7:30 and certain to be VERY late to work. I’m almost always late, but I feel it’s only fair to measure in degrees of lateness. Work officially starts at 8:30 a.m. If I can make it to work by 9:00, I consider myself only slightly late… really, that’s practically on time. It’s not on time, but it’s close. Barely counts as late, in my opinion. If I get in by 9:30 – well, I’m late. I’m pretty late. Late enough to feel a little bad about it, and hope my manager doesn’t see me walk in.
If I get in after 9:30 – well, that’s super late. I definitely feel guilty. I even consider whether I should turn in a form for “personal time off” (vacation time). I mean, that’s over an hour late – that’s really late. If I get in after 10:00 – that’s super duper really late. That’s a slink-in-the-door hope-no-one-sees-me late.
I have an additional obstacle to punctuality right now. They are working to “eliminate slow zones” on the blue line of the el (elevated train). They seem to do this annually. Honestly, it perplexes me. They announce daily that we’re traveling at reduced speed because they are “working to eliminate slow zones”. So, we travel at a snail’s pace much of the commute, supposedly because those brave rail workers are doing some sort of maintenance to the tracks. Then, after several months, they’ll be done and we’ll go back to normal speed.
What confuses me is we aren’t going any faster than we went before they “eliminated the slow zones”. So, it doesn’t seem to me like they eliminated anything. The first year I rode the blue line and heard they were “eliminating the slow zones”, I imagined once they were done we’d fly downtown at incredible speeds, shaving minutes off my commute. But, that’s not what happened. Just the same old commute as before. It seems like what they’re really doing is CREATING slow zones for a few months, then getting rid of them again. Maybe it’s just to make us appreciate the normal speed, knowing it could be worse?
Submitted for publication in The Greeley Citizen
