She's never early, she's always late

Ricky: Lucy, you haven’t even got your dress on yet. You were supposed to be ready an hour ago.

Lucy: Well, it’s all your fault.

Ricky: My fault?

Lucy: Yes. I wasted an hour telling you I’d be ready in a minute.

I’ve been running late since the day I was born, literally: I arrived two weeks past my due date. My life since has been a bleary blur of sleeping through alarms, sheepishly asking for late passes and hurriedly applying make-up at stoplights. I’ve tiptoed into weddings just in time to see the couple pronounced man and wife, I’ve missed the first acts of countless plays, I’ve arrived at birthday parties after the candles were blown out. In the process, I’ve irritated friends, family, bosses, co-workers, doctors, hairdressers…the list goes on. Those who’ve known me for a considerable length of time have learned to say “Meet me at 2:30” when they want me at 3 o’clock.

It’s a sickness of sorts, and my beloved Lucy was likewise afflicted. In Episode #33, “Lucy’s Schedule,” Mr. And Mrs. Ricardo miss an important dinner with Ricky’s new boss, Mr. Littlefield, because Lucy takes too long getting dressed.

Furious, Ricky decides to put Lucy on a strict timeline. “I’m making out a schedule so you can budget your time,” he says. “Budget my time?” asks Lucy. “Like I budget my money?” (“Heaven forbid!” says Ricky.) His plan is to ask Mr. Littlefield and his wife over for dinner, where he’ll be able to show off how he turned his tardy wife into a timely wonder. Unfortunately for Ricky, Mrs. Littlefield tips Lucy off ahead of time in a spirit of sisterly solidarity, revealing that she and her husband were invited to “watch her perform.”

And perform she does, with the help of Ethel and Mrs. Littlefield, staging a meal so speedy that no one can finish a course or a conversation. (My favorite moment: Ethel throwing biscuits from the kitchen to the dining room instead of carrying them.)

Ricky should’ve known better than to try to change Lucy’s stripes, as his previous attempts consistently backfired. But while not every punctually-challenged person is as stubborn or willful as Lucy, I’m not sure any of us can be reformed.

I once heard Dr. Phil say that people who have a problem with being on time are “arrogant” by nature because they don’t consider how their actions affect others. I vehemently disagree with this theory. When I’m late for something, say, a dentist’s appointment, it’s not like I breeze obliviously into the office and expect a warm, accommodating welcome. On the contrary, I spend the drive to the dentist sweating and cursing at stoplights and start apologizing profusely the second I burst through the door. I’m aware of the fact that people are negatively impacted by my delinquent arrival, and I feel horrible about it. Still, the pattern is firmly in place: First, the clock magically speeds itself up when I’m not looking. Then, once I take notice of the time, I enter into a sort of panic-induced paralysis. The floors turn into quicksand, my eyes glaze over and all I can hear in my head is the tick, tick, tick of the mounting minutes.

I imagine this is what Lucy felt standing at her closet door, contemplating what to wear to dinner with Mr. Littlefield. Ricky’s repeated nagging certainly didn’t help. While you might expect that telling someone to hurry up would make them, well, hurry up, in my experience it only adds to the immobilization.

So yes, Lucy was always late and it drove everyone around her nuts and I undoubtedly drive everyone around me nuts. Ironically, I think it was Lucille Ball (off-camera) who offered the most pragmatic take on this type of inherent personality flaw. “I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can,” she said.

It sounds counterintuitive, to plan life around your limitations – but at the same time, it makes more sense than anything else.

Most importantly, it’s what Lucy would do.