I must be tired. I was sitting in my office reviewing my lecture notes, when I glanced at the clock. It’s 20 to! My class is at a quarter to! Panic followed, because I was still tinkering with a few slides, and I had yet to get to my classroom. Chaos! Rushing about! Slamming down the last few touches! Off to the room I go!
No one was there. What’s going on? My class starts at a quarter to noon — it was a quarter to 11. Sheesh.
At least I got to go back to my office and have a cup of tea. I’m getting too old for this stuff. It doesn’t help that I’m just generally losing my mind lately.
At least you didn’t fall down in a snowbank.
“I’m getting too old for this stuff.”
I’ve heard that line from the hero in several action movies.
I’ll go you one further. I took an afternoon nap and was all panicked because my day starts at five and it was already six! Frantically booting up and signing in to work, only to realize it was PM and not AM.
Regarding @2
Watch out for the bomb hidden behind the WC.
Also, if you have any way to get an extended leave, once the pandemic is over get a thorough check on your heart and cardiovascular health, then rest and do absolutely norhing stressful for several months.
You only have one body. Look after it.
I did exactly the same thing a few weeks back. Had an appointment for a haircut, went online to check mail and got a little distracted, looked at the time and panicked. Shot off an email to my hairdresser apologizing for being late. Then realized I was half an hour early instead.
Brain and brain, what is brain?
I’m at work, I look at the clock and it shows a quarter to. Great, time to wrap it up, shut down and head home. Oh, wait. It’s a quarter to four, not five. Another hour of this crap.
I’ll go you one further. I took an afternoon nap and was all panicked because my day starts at five and it was already six! Frantically booting up and signing in to work, only to realize it was PM and not AM.
I can massively top that. I was keynoting a conference in Milan. Flew from DC, got there early afternoon, got to my hotel, had some dinner and went to sleep after setting my alarm for 6 (plenty of time in case of traffic) – when the alarm went off I showered, got dressed, etc., went down to the lobby and asked if the nice guy at the desk could call me a cab. A stream of eye-bugged Italian came back at me, and a lot of laughter from some other Italians. I was still woozy and slow on the uptake until one of the other Italians who spoke ‘murican explained that it was 6PM and getting to the conference hall 12hr early was going too far.
@Marcus Ranum, # 7: I asked a desk clerk to call me a taxi once. He said, “Okay-you’re a taxi.”
If you like panic, watch “Clockwise” with a younger John Cleese (he was not an asshole back then, except as a film character)
Swedes are apparently neurotic in the same way as the British; the film was a success here while bombing in other countries.
An hour early? That’s nothing. I once arrived at a friend’s house a week early for an Easter weekend party complete with a homemade dessert in hand. They were hosting a party of their daughter’s girl scout troop at the time, hence the looks of extreme confusion when they opened the door and found one of their single middle-aged friends on the doorstep.
Perhaps the only time in my life where being an atheist was the root cause of my mistake.
I left the dessert with them.
OT
Iggy Pop* is receiving the 2022 Polar Prize .
Now back to ordinary news.
*James Newell Osterberg
I had a similar experience as a child. In winter, I woke up in the middle of the night, looked at the clock, and instantly panicked that I am late for school and my parents are late for work. I run to wake them up and when my father unglued his eyelids enough to look at the clock himself he kindly corrected me. It turned out that in my sleepiness I confused the long and the short clock-hand and we still had several hours of sleep left.
@9 Yeah,much of the filming was done in and around Much Wenlock in Shropshire.
PS,Did you know there is a Little Wenlock a few miles away.
Also nearby are two hamlets called Homer and Wigwig,I kid you not.