I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date
So said the White Rabbit in Disney’s 1951 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.* The panic felt by our full-eared friend is something I have felt regularly throughout my life. Many of you may say, “sure, we all feel that; no-one likes to be late.” But, dear reader, I am in a different league, right there with Lewis Carroll’s bunny, quietly (or not so quietly) freaking out at the prospect of missing an appointment, a flight, a speaking engagement, court, a social commitment, or even a deadline I set for myself.
Since March 13, 2020, however, the pit of my stomach has been pleasantly devoid of the bile that builds with potential tardiness. Even for me, it’s very difficult to conjure up any angst about missing a Zoom call, knowing the computer is in the next room, and I have five other devices to deliver the connection, if the first one fails.
However, I renewed acquaintance with the unpleasantness associated with thinking I’d be late when, this past weekend, after a hiatus since January 2020, I had a speaking engagement.
The decision to agree to speak was not without its own anxiety. The Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association (ONPHA) annual conference is one I’ve attended as a presenter for several years. It’s a big one, a three day exploration of issues from big-picture policy stuff to nuts-and-bolts ones, attracting more than 1000 people from across the province all involved in providing affordable and safe housing to folks on the margins of society. These housers are my people.
For two years, ONPHA was online, and I attended. It didn’t tick the boxes of a typical conference - no chance to develop relationships with the clients and would-be clients. These folks share a values-based approach to housing provision and understand the challenges we face as housing lawyers. Our work can have some very bad outcomes for individuals as we try to help communities grapple with the challenges of tenants who don’t conform to the community standard in a variety of ways. It’s often tough work and the providers know it first hand.
So when ONPHA asked me to speak this year live at a Toronto conference, I was torn: was I ready to re-emerge from my COVID-cocoon? And if not for ONPHA — just downtown where I could drive myself and leave immediately after — then for what? I decided it was time. I told them of my COVID-related concerns and they committed to make me as comfortable as they could, knowing the thing they couldn’t promise was a fully masked and vaxxed group in the room. I agreed. It was a huge decision.
I mentally prepared myself for potentially being the only masked person within sight, for feeling awkward with old friends, with stumbling at in-person presenting after delivering so many Zoom webinars, with what to wear (yes, it matters to me), and so on.
But never once did I consider the anxiety I would feel at the possibility of being late!
I left home Saturday morning, giving myself an hour to commute, park, and get to the room for a sound-check 30 minutes before showtime. Halfway there, I felt an oddly familiar yet simultaneously unfamiliar feeling in the pit of my gut. I looked at the brake lights ahead of me on the 401 and started to panic — my hands began to sweat; I felt an urge for a bathroom; my face both flushed and blanched simultaneously - this was not good. What if I am late?!??! And then I thought - wow, I haven’t had this feeling in a very long time! All my COVID-anxiety got immediately re-channelled into lateness anxiety. I assessed each offramp and side street for traffic, mentally doing the calculation: would that be better than the road I was on? I lamented the hubris that has prevented me from putting Wazes on my phone which would surely give me the quickest route. At this time of the morning on a Saturday, my effort to be timely would surely not be thwarted. But would it? I reached for my “favourites” on my carphone to find someone to talk me down. I know this was irrational and that I needed someone to tell me so.
I told my friend of my first memory of lateness-panic. I was with my parents on a trip to the UK in the late 70s. We were returning to Canada on a charter flight (remember those?) out of Gatwick, London’s suburban airport. Dad was known for speedy driving and after two weeks in the UK had become comfortable again with right-hand drive, but was a foreigner by then, and didn’t know the byways to Gatwick. We were stuck in construction mayhem. My mother - am earliness capital F Fan - was in full melt-down mode about our impending departure. When we arrived at the airport, we ditched the rental car and ran to check in. We were late - very late. Our flight was boarding and was, of course, at the very last gate. They were no longer accepting checked luggage: too late to get it loaded. We ran 197 gates (OK, maybe I’m exaggerating) with all the stuff we had from a two week trip. Sweat dripped from all of us, and mom was near-tears the whole way. We made the flight - they held it for us.
In each conversation with my mother that relates to being on time, or flights, or travel, or England, or airports, or construction, or dad, she recounts this trauma. Whether nature or nurture, my mum’s need for timeliness has an enormous impact on me.
To be clear, I got to my 30 minute sound check with 15 minutes to spare and had a great time back on a stage after such a long break. But that lateness anxiety: that I could do without. I spoke at a community meeting just two days later and basked in its walkability. Maybe I should just stick to local gigs. Or get the hell over the anxiety. Yeah, that’s what I should do.
* Lewis Carroll purists (and I know who you are) will know his actual words were: “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late.” But they are not imbedded into our psyche in the same way.
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