Some people are habitually late for everything they do. Some more so than others. Some of them justify it under the guise of being “fashionably late”, that obnoxious concept where people, for some inexplicable reason, believe that the time on an invitation is open to negotiation, particularly if the event in question doesn’t involve people talking, singing, dancing or stripping (forget that last one) for your pleasure on a stage.
Where has this concept come from, though? eHow gives a frankly unnecessarily detailed five-step guide of how to be fashionably late. Urban Dictionary defines it as anywhere between 5 and 45 minutes depending on the event. But then they also define it as “showing up 5 minutes late with a supermodel on your cock”, so perhaps take their word with a grain or two of salt. The ever-reliable Ask Yahoo! fails to come up with any conclusive answers whatsoever. And no-one seems to be able to quote a reputable source pointing out where this concept came from in the first place, besides something vague about “rich and famous people at parties”.
So why do people do it, and where are they taught to be this way? I’m typically on time for things, unless it’s something REALLY IMPORTANT, in which case I will usually arrive three hours early, get bored, go and find somewhere that sells sandwiches, eat them, realise I’m going to be late if I don’t hurry the fuck up and end up rushing to get to the place at which I arrived exceedingly early in the first place. But social occasions? If I say I’ll be there at 8pm, I’ll be there at 8pm.
Many embittered experiences and mournful tweets from a lonely booth in the corner of a bar haven’t taught me my lesson yet. I turned up on time for my own stag night and my guests waltzed in the door approximately two hours later. I’d been having some fun on Twitter in the meantime, of course, but that meant by the time we were all drunk enough to collectively pretend we were a hot 18-year old virgin on Omegle my phone battery was almost flat. We went on to have an awesome night, incidentally, but it could have been two hours longer had people showed up when I’d asked them to.
People don’t change easily, so there’s no real sense complaining about this in the long run, though. So with that in mind, I think I’ll just keep on being the barfly for two lonely, Twitter-filled hours while I wait for people to show up. And the rest of you can take your time washing your balls, applying supposedly-attractive smelly liquids, polishing your shoes, swearing at holes in your trousers/pants/tights, realising that your boots don’t fit any more, finishing watching that hilarious series of 200 cat videos on YouTube or having a nervous breakdown in the meantime.
I’ll see you at the bar! (And just because I got there first does not mean I will be getting the first round in, just so you know. Actually, it does. I will have got the first round in. A round of one drink. For me. Yeah.)
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I freely admit I show up late more often than I would like, but that owes more to my own poor time management skills, the lack of a fresh, sharp razorblade or the like than to any supposed sense of wanting to be “fashionably late.” And I’m always ridiculously apologetic about it when it happens.
But those drink specials only go for so long and I’m on a budget, damnit! I can’t get properly drunk if I’m futzing around at home. Believe me that when I’m running late, you can almost guarantee that I’m rushing around in a near panic, spewing explitives by the basketfull.
I’m definitely someone who turns up late to things. I tend to find it hard to drag myself from something I’m in the middle of to do something else, but really I don’t have any good reason. As for being ‘fashionably late’, I always thought that was a female thing.