This is Satire!
Jan Steen – Lunch at our place…The happy fellow on the floor could be me.
We almost had guests for lunch yesterday. Almost, as they did not show, they accepted our lunch invitation and agreed to arrive at about 12:30.
Lea, my wife, is fairly tolerant of late arrivers and when 12:35 came and went, she told me to practice patience, not to fret, and calm down. The problem is my extreme lack of permissiveness with people and events arriving or starting later than the agreed-upon time. As disrespect for time is the hallmark of most Georgians, I’m afraid we may have chosen the wrong State to come and retire to. For astrophysicists time also has very little meaning, but that has no correlation to my Georgian friends disrespecting the chronology of events.
In any case, by one o’clock, when even Lea started to accept the possibility that our guests might be no-shows, I opened the nice Pinot Grigio I had purchased for the occasion and was well on my way to finish the bottle. Also, a large portion of the now overcooked shrimp rolls were being washed down. Fish and other sea creatures need to swim and swim they did.
Hieronymus Bosch – And swim they did…
By that time and mainly to prevent me from drinking all the wine and eating all the food, Lea joined me at the table and heartily tucked in. Not much later we tackled the coffee and cherry pie with cream topping. I’m going into the details a little to make my readers understand that we don’t fool around when we invite guests. We expect them to present themselves at the appointed time and eat what they are served, goddammit!
We invite often, and most of our guests not being from these parts, arrive promptly and on time. I don’t know what it is with Georgians. Don’t get me wrong, they are nice enough, but Jesus Christ, why can’t they come on time? And doctors, don’t let me even start on them. I’ve never wasted more time than in Georgian doctor’s waiting rooms.
Not so long ago I was in the hospital for a minor surgical intervention. After waiting in the pre-op cubicle for six hours and more than four hours beyond the appointed time, I told the nurse to remove the tubes and went home. The surgery never happened and I saved Medicare a heap of money.
Lawyers aren’t any better. The only time I dealt with an attorney, he showed up 30 min late and when I addressed his tardiness he “explained” that he always arrived late as people in Georgia were never on time, and that he would rather have others wait on him than the other way around.
Judge Rummy – 1920 cartoon – Coming home late
I thought that rather brilliant, and since that event I have been practicing the same time-saving approach.
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