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Dear Reader,
Am I the last of the "On Time" breed? If time is money, then lately I've been spending way too much of my "money" on other people.
I grew up with the phrases "Don't be late" and "Be on time," grilled into me. It wasn't an "iffy" thing. "Be on time, or it's a sin" that was my mother's mantra. Well okay, my mother never actually said it was a sin to be late, but it was reflected in her tone of voice and the "evil" eye look she gave me when she said it.
People who are always late have made up their own language to cover their "sin," and it's changed over the years. Late-comers used to say, "I'll meet you around 4 o'clock." 'Around' to me meant 15 minutes. But then there was always the question, is that 15 'around' minutes before or after four? So what someone was really telling me was, "I need you to carve out 30 minutes and wait for me to show up."
"Around" used to be the word of the day for late-comers, but now "ish" seems to be the new excuse for not being on time.
"I'll meet you at 3-'ish'," but still I wonder, just what exactly does that mean? And is "ish" even a word? So of course I looked it up and to my surprise it is, but unless it's slang for a magazine, you need to toss the "ish" on the back end of another word to make it legal. So I guess it's not a sin when people say "I'll meet you at three-ish." And I can't even blame it on a younger generation, because for years whenever someone asked my aunt how old she was her reply was, "I'm fifty-ish."
Some folks don't even bother trying to fudge a time, they just admit the truth. They have no idea when something is going to happen, so you have to wait--sometimes all day long. FedEx was going to deliver a guitar to my husband and the tracking information stated the guitar would be delivered some time between 9am and 8pm and it needed to be signed for. That pretty much made it a FedEx day, but at least they were honest.
I guess I have to accept the new "ish" since it is in the dictionary, but I've created my own new wait-ish rule. I'll "ish" for 15 minutes and then I'm "ish-ing" over-and-out the door.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
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