Broken
June 24, 2009
On Monday last week I made my way out to Kyoto for a class in the evening. I got there early around 6:00 for this 6:30 class. I headed to a Starbucks near the pharmaceutical company where I will be teaching and ordered a nice tall ice latte. With the heat approaching, there’s nothing like a nice tall late outside.
At around 6:10 I get a call from one of the guys from a company I work for asking where I was and if I was ok or not. Strange, I thought. I responded that I was near the company and that yes, I was, in fact, fine.
“The class started ten minutes ago…”
Oh crap on a stick.
I had somehow forgotten that this class actually starts at 5:50. I have classes that start at 6:30 and somehow I mixed the times up. I had to ditch my just arrived latte and made a mad dash for the company. In the end I was about 20 minutes late. The students were super understanding and really just laughed my apologies away. And I apologized profusely! I also apologized to my company and as expected, everyone was super cool about it.
What really bugged me was that in my nearly eight years in Japan, I had never, not even once, been late to a lesson until that day. As a trainer back in the old Nova days, it was my disliked responsibility to speak with teachers who did turn up late, whether it was an accident or not. I was probably one of the very very very few people who had never been late before there and I thought I could continue my beautiful record at this new place.
Sadly, I can no longer say “I have never been late”. I can only settle for a much less, “I have almost never been late”.
