On Running Late

I'm a hypocrite.

When it's time for me to leave for a gig, I'm always ready to walk out the door at least 15 minutes before I actually need to walk out the door, and that's including a 10 minute traffic buffer...so that I can arrive 20 minutes early. Being late is a mortal sin in the orchestra world. You can get away with a lot in the back few rows of the orchestra, but you must be on time. Everyone has a horror story about the one time they were late for a rehearsal. One friend was riding a train that broke down. Another wrote down the wrong start time and thought that the rehearsal started a half-hour later than it actually did. I was late once because I drove to the wrong rehearsal space. I've never actually known anyone who was late to a concert, but sometimes you hear the faint echo of a ghostly scream coming from the subterranean corridors below the concert hall, and I think that the wraiths of old conductors must be torturing a violist who was late for a pops concert. (Although, admittedly, it would be difficult to distinguish the sound of a violist being tormented from the sound a violist practicing.)

Otto Karl Shdenkenheim was music director from 1962-1968. Now a wandering spirit, he is best remembered for the extraordinary slumber he produced by programming every Haydn symphony during his tenure with the orchestra.

So this is why I always make sure that NO MATTER WHAT I will be on time to my rehearsals and concerts. And I'm a horrible hypocrite, because when J needs to get to a rehearsal, I show all the foresight and haste of a elderly yak. Sunday morning was just such an occasion. I'd had a concert the previous night and made a deliberate effort to procure the two grocery items I'd need for the following morning--coffee and shaving cream.

I was out of both, so between my rehearsal and show I wandered up and down Elmwood St. in Buffalo. I found shaving cream in a discount grocery store, but they didn't carry anything except plebian coffee. (I passed the plastic tubs of pre-ground Folgers and made a face for the benefit of the empty aisle that conveyed both superiority and disgust, as if even the smell of cheap coffee was turning my highly sophisticated stomach.) I did find shaving cream, and thereby gave occasion to awkwardly explain to a clerk in each of the next two stores that I visited (neither of which had coffee) that although I had just purchased my shaving cream elsewhere, I hadn't the faintest idea where my receipt was or if I'd even been offered one, but I would be leaving their store without buying anything because they didn't carry any coffee products that met my lofty standards.

And this was why I woke up at 7:30 on Sunday morning and didn't have any coffee. We agreed to stop at a Tim Horton's on the way to church (and a Wegmans on the way back, thank goodness there was still some remnant of civilization left in the world) in order to caffeinate, which J reminded me again was an expensive habit.

I limped my way downstairs to the kitchen table, and opened my Greek New Testament. The whole world seemed to be in black and white. I put my head in my hands, and started to pick up the translation I was making from St. Mark. J sat next to me and worked on her cereal, occasionally making pleasant remarks to which I grunted acknowledgement. Sometimes in movies with loud explosions (these are the types of movies which make up the majority of my high-brow fancy-coffee-drinking film diet) an explosion will occur particularly close to the main character, and the director will convey his disorientation by cutting out all sound except a high pitched ringing, and scanning the camera around unsteadily. This is what its like to be without coffee, except you also have a headache. Yes, it is actually worse than surviving a nearby explosion.

We needed to be on the road by 8:00, and J was ready to go by 7:50. I was nowhere near ready to go, and I was also profoundly unhelpful with the hardest part of going anywhere as a family--getting James ready. I didn't particularly want to go to church anyway. Her church is far away, and it is a contemporary music church. I don't hate contemporary music, but I also don't make any effort to listen to it unless there are special circumstances. It's sort of like listening to Spohr. If Spohr comes on the radio, I change to a different channel unless the performer is truly exceptional. When Spohr is on a concert program, I avoid the concert unless a close personal friend is part of the performance.

Spohr's name even sounds uninteresting. It's a cross between "boring" and "snore." Sopor is Latin for deep sleep, so it's no surprise that Spohr is soporific. If Louis Spohr were a campfire treat, he'd be a lukewarm tofu between two unsalted wafer crackers. We'd call them S'pohrs.

This guys music is Spohrrible.

So that's why we were running late on Sunday. I was uncaffeinated, unhelpful with James, and dragging my feet to go listen to Spohr with drumset.

"I think it's going to be a good day." said Julie

I looked over at her, and she was neatly done up in a short black skirt, a snazzy brand new top, with cute black shoes and sunglasses atop her head.

And it was a good day.