P was looking at the Daily Post week-end writing challenge and it was about lists. It gave him a great idea! He could make a list of things to do and not to do so that he could get to the interview on time the next day morning. In P’s quirky life, he found it very hard to be on time anywhere, any time.
P firmly believed that this was not because of his fault. Despite striving his level best to be punctual, fate and nature seemed to be conspiring against him.The list of these conspiracies kept on increasing:
1) There were incidents where his alarm clock gave up after he repeatedly pressed the snooze button and had left him sleeping blissfully till noon even when he had an early morning appointment.
2) There were times when the can of tea powder would turn up empty, or there would be no milk in the fridge, when he dragged himself up from bed to get his first cup of tea. He had to rush to the corner shop or supermarket to get these items. Can you blame P if his constitution was such that he could come alive only after his cup of tea in the morning? Can you blame him again when at the shops, he decided to buy other things that were running low in the kitchen? And can you blame him if it took more than the expected time as he checked the prices and searched for the cheapest items on sale? Naturally he would be late if he had not slotted the time for ‘grocery shopping’ in his morning activities prior to leaving for an appointment.
3) His attire also used to give him plenty of trouble. Finding the right apparel from his wardrobe was always a time-consuming task..... especially when he was dressing up to go to some important function and changed his mind several times on what to wear. Who could blame P for wanting to look his best?
4) Many a time, his clothes for the day had been forgotten on the clothesline after washing and it would have rained in the night leaving them soaking wet. He would then have to throw them in the dryer and iron them. P only could shake his head at nature’s vagaries.
5) Even the lowly socks seemed to have it in for Mr P. Many a time his well laid plans to be punctual were trounced by the hunt for a matching pair.
6) Then, there were all those times when he believed that he had eaten well or was not hungry till he was about to leave for some appointment and all of a sudden, pangs of hunger would claw at his entrails. He then had to stop and eat something, upsetting the time schedule.
7) Also, his car keys would disappear at the last moment, and he would spend valuable minutes hunting for it everywhere only to find it hiding beneath some papers on the table or sometimes even in his pockets!
8) Talking about keys, his house keys also had their days of vanishing act, throwing him into a turmoil. Very often he would find them still stuck in the key hole of the door forgotten to be pulled out after entering the house the previous night.
9) Sometimes it would be the turn for his glasses to play hide and seek, and waste his time. They were often retrieved from beneath the bed where he had fallen asleep watching TV, or sometimes in the car.
10) When his wallet became untraceable, P used to become very desperate. He could not go out without it as it contained his driver licence, cash and cards. Frantic searches have often unearthed it from shopping bags he had brought home from the supermarkets, if not from under the car seat, sofa, top of the fridge and so on....
11) There were occasions when he could locate his wallet but was thrown into a panic as he could not find his bank cards within the wallet. The mere thought of all his money being siphoned out by some fraudster, used to get him so worried that he would spend precious time ringing up the bank and credit card companies, cancelling his card only to find it later in his wallet, secreted in one of its small pockets or concealed by some slips from the supermarket check-outs.
The list could go on and on, but for now, P was making a list of things to do to help him get to the interview on time. This interview was important and it was at 9 am, which was the time he usually turned his alarm off and snuggled deeper under the covers in his bed. He also did not want to turn up too early for the interview. “Ten minutes before the interview is ideal” he remembered reading somewhere.
So P grabbed pen and paper and made his list:
1) The interview was at 9 am so he planned to get up very early...... He noted to set his wake-up alarm as early as 8.30 am.
2) He decided to choose his attire for the next day and have the clothes laid out on the ironing board.
3) Pressing his shirt and pants for the interview would take some time, P guessed. He mulled a bit on whether he should finish this job today, but then, it was such a nice evening and P was just not in the mood. He decided that as soon as he woke up the next day, he would spend not more than 5 minutes and iron out all those creases.
4) Not to be outdone by his socks the next day, he decided to find a suitable matching pair and have them lying at the top of his bedside drawer.
5) He decided to do away with his morning shave as it could save him some ten minutes. Moreover, didn’t the faint undergrowth on the chin and cheeks help in giving him an intellectual look?
6) Usually his morning showers ranged anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour. He decided to reduce the time of his short morning shower to 5 minutes the next day morning.
7) The time spent in front of the mirror sprucing and grooming was to be cut short from half an hour to 5 minutes.
8) He decided to locate his car key, house key, glasses, wallet and cards and place them together on the dining table so that he would not waste any time looking for them.
9) Skipping his usual elaborate breakfast, P decided to have an Up & Go on his drive to the interview. He had estimated the drive to be 10 minutes. Even though he would not be able to reach the venue 10 minutes earlier than the scheduled time, he assessed that he would be able to reach there at least 5 minutes in advance.
10) He decided to go to bed early, rather than stay late into the night watching movies and late night shows, so that he would not hit the snooze button when the alarm went off the next day morning.
P followed everything as per the list and exactly at 8.45 am the next morning, he hurriedly grabbed his brief case and his UP&GO, stepped out of the house and shut the self locking front door behind him.
He put his hand inside his pocket for the car key......................
The UP&GO and briefcase fell from his listless hand as the image of the cards and the car key still lying on top of the dining table flashed through his mind.....................along with the key to the front door of the house which was now auto-locked.
