CJ Kaplan

The Late Show by CJ Kaplan

“RUN FASTER!” I yelled to Lisa and our three small children.

After a quarter-mile sprint from Central Parking to Baggage Check-In, we had just cleared security and were now galloping through Logan Airport’s cavernous Terminal A toward our departure gate and our soon-to-be-departed flight to Atlanta for my brother’s wedding.

“My feet hurt, Daddy,” moaned my 8-year-old daughter through tears.

“Go on without me,” gasped my 6-year-old son in true Action Film style.

“More! More!” screamed the 2-year-old, who was being pushed in his stroller at Mach 7 speed and thoroughly enjoying the experience.

“This is all your fault,” snarled my wife as she shouldered two heavy bags and guided the stroller/rocket ship through oncoming foot traffic.

Thing is, she was right.

Reverse clock-wipe to earlier that morning. Ignoring Lisa’s plea to get an early start, I had cavalierly left the house for the airport with almost no margin for error. Five minutes into the trip, I discovered that I had forgotten my laptop and had to return home to retrieve it. A detour, a traffic jam and two bathroom stops later we found ourselves in this mad dash across Logan. I wish I could say this sort of thing had never happened in the 20-plus years that I’d known my wife, but that would be a lie.

Perhaps time management is hereditary. Then, I could justifiably blame my lateness on my parents. For my family, a 6pm invitation meant that we showed up in the 6 o'clock hour, anywhere from 6:01 to 6:59. We were never on time. Even when we absolutely had to be someplace at a specific hour, something always conspired to make us late. By contrast, if Lisa’s family had to be somewhere at 6, they were there by 5:50 at the latest. Oftentimes, they would arrive at parties before the hosts themselves.

When our two families met for the first time at a local restaurant, we cleverly told my parents to be there 15 minutes before the actual reservation while instructing her parents to be there 15 minutes after it. Didn’t work. Even though I was with Lisa’s parents on the way to the meal and did everything in my power to slow them down, we still got to dinner well before we needed to be. It was as if they were a juggernaut of perpetual earliness. Meanwhile, my parents arrived some time during the appetizers.

Because Lisa and I grew up with opposing points of view of what "on time" meant, there was some friction when we were first married. At a good friend’s wedding, I memorably darted down the aisle just ahead of the bride after hanging out a tad too long in a pool hall before the ceremony. Though the newlyweds laughed it off, Lisa, who was in the actual wedding party, was not as amused.

I’m always operating under the assumption that I have a surplus of time whereas Lisa always feels she’s at a deficit. Yet, even after 15 years of marriage, neither of us has changed. We've just adapted. She’ll tell me that the fate of our son’s athletic future rests on me getting him to baseball practice at 10 knowing full well that most of the team won’t be there before 10:15. Which is likely when I’ll get him there. For my part, I’ll declare that our daughter doesn’t want to be picked up from her play date a minute before 5:30 in hopes that Lisa will only get there at 5:15—the actual time our daughter requested.

If one of the tenets of a successful marriage is to avoid trying to make the other person something they're not, then we've accomplished just that. Each of us is allowed to dance to the beat of our own timekeeper as long as it doesn’t affect the rest of the family. It was this cardinal rule that I broke on that frenzied day at Logan.

Even though we made our flight (with 12 seconds to spare, I might add), Lisa vowed that the return trip would be different. True to her word, we left for Hartsfield Airport two hours before takeoff. Unfortunately, our flight was delayed and we spent an extra two hours in the airport. Predictably, the kids lost their minds and I found myself wishing we had been later.

If only I had thought to leave my laptop at the hotel.