Era of Procrastination

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.--Charles Darwin

Anyone can tell you about procrastination. It is a universal conundrum, affecting drooling toddlers and drooling seniors alike, and striking down young high schoolers. It is the bane of all workers even slightly at risk to distractions... And like anything else universally affecting the entire human population, like a ludicrous love for peanut butter and ham waffles, procrastination can be broken down into a few different time frames...

A national dish of all 900 countries.

General Overview

Next time your parents try to convince you that sorting dominoes according to the number of dots on each side is less important than homework, try this: Ask them about their childhood and their own school procrastination. Chances are they'll tell you an interesting story and help you procrastinate at the same time; you just bought yourself some time to figure out how to arrange those two blocks with a 5-2 pattern on each side. Just don't glance at the domino box too often or they'll catch on. My mum recalled living across the street from the school, and as she went every morning her own mother would watch her... so my mum went in the front of the school and waltzed right out the back whenever she felt like it. But the point is, procrastination convinces you that an infinite number of things are more desirable than homework: smelling that stain on your ceiling, staring at dust floating in your room, even gazing slack-jawed at a pencil for three hours will suffice. But let me indulge you with a few slightly more specific and thoroughly incapacitating examples of procrastination that you're all too familiar with...

"Good habits start now!"

Sunday Night Blues

"Man, this was one great weekend. From Friday night hanging out behind 7-11 and getting yelled at by the Indian owner to Sunday afternoon having one-handed shoelace tying competitions with your friends, the excitement just kept on comin'!" Well, guess what, it's now Sunday night, 9:00, and it turns out your backpack hasn't even been opened. Hell, you can't bring yourself to recall where you put it. After an hour of digging  through layers of dirty clothes, food wrappers, and fruit husks, you successfully excavate your academic portmanteau and begin to peruse your papers. Time to get to work.

Three hours later, you wake up. Seriously, time to get to work... right after I check my email.

It's now 2:45am, and you're knee deep in three sentences of literary wisdom. The essay due needs to fill five pages. Single-spaced. Dude, just go to sleep at this point. Tell the teacher your backpack got buried in a landslide, it's basically the truth.

Except that's not homework. He's researching sandpit backpack removal techniques.

Day-Before Deadline

As you receive the assignment, you vow, "This time, it'll be done a WEEK before deadline. I swear, my work will overflow with grace, beauty, and education, and my teacher will deferentially bow before me for the rest of the year in awe of such a masterpiece."

This is what you said a month ago. You told yourself it would get done next week every weekend, and guess what, the deadline is tomorrow and the empty word doc is mocking you with a grin while it shakes its private parts at your auntie (Holy Grail ref). In other words, yep, you're screwed. Once again, the only option is to sit down and power through it... or you could go and raid the fridge for the ninth time today. Is there even a question which one you pick?

Too hungry to sleep. Too tired to eat. Still better than doing homework.

Period Before Class

Well, this time, the teacher assigned some asinine form of homework yesterday. But, once again, you had much better things to do after school like skipping rocks on the street and planking on top of moving cars dressed as a gorilla. When you got back home, between eating and eating, there was no time to pause your frenzied chewing and do 800 math problems. The next day, in school, you're too lazy to even copy the work. C'mon, even Ben copies his work in a timely manner, you lazy, poo-sniffing, no good yellabelly bum. But you have class next period, and it's now or never, buster... but your friends are playing cards, and they only do this the entire day, so it would be like a sin to miss out! At this point, just... just drop out of high school and become a Walmart greeter or something. But you'd probably suck at that, too.

A synopsis of the next five years of your life.

Next Stop, College: For now? DMV.

Sometimes, it's cold. Bone-rattling, spine-cracking cold. Usually, these cold days directly coincide with the days when your mom calls out, "Need a jacket?!?" And you simply smirk, walking into the icy mist with your bermuda shorts and t-shirt.

Totally normal behavior for me.

That was the day I ended up going to the DMV and waited on line outside at 8 in the morning on a Saturday; an ungodly hour at best. Getting your permit is one of the few steps towards becoming a real college kid, and one that's pretty easy to put off when your main modes of transportation are:

1. The light-rail in all of its fare-officer dodging glory
2. Footing it, usually in sandals or ill-fitting sneakers
3. Biking on a decrepit piece of metal that needs to be kicked in encouragement every few blocks

On second thought, maybe a car's exactly what I need. But let me say, getting to drive one could really be easier.

First: The lines. Good Lord. When you go to Six Flags and stand in line for Kingda Ka, at least you know you're getting a thrill eventually. Delayed gratification at its finest. But the DMV? Oh. Oh no. Oh, ohhhh no. Finally arriving at the end of a 'queue', as they're known in Britain, doesn't exactly kindle excitement in me. In fact, waiting and actually being served are almost equally horrible experiences. But the lines are incredible, just like accidentally slicing your own thumb off with a dull spoon is incredible. And imagine when DMVs were government run? You could camp out for weeks just to get halfway to the front door... shenanigans like that typify the pre-Internet era, when people were glad for distractions like that. 

This is what the 80s were like.

Next: The people. Nowhere else in America will you experience such a skewed, motley representative demographic of the American peoples. When a line drags itself slower than a turtle through barbed wire, distractions truly are easy to come by. In this case, counting Indians. Looking around "Step 1" of the DMV line, I racked up a head count of 16 Indians out of... 20 people. Given, it was early, and I guess they're all about early birding the worm, but... seriously? If I yelled, "Shah! Patel!" half of the entire building would turn around and stare at me. The oddest thing, though, is that many of these immigrants spoke better English than a majority of people I know or have met, including the Hispanic lady who was attending to me at "Step 29C."

Sketching from memory, she looked something like this.

Last: The silly paperwork. I accidentally filled out "USA" in the county box of my permit application (county, country, all the same!) and was viciously beaten by a troop of DMV commandoes. When I handed another kind, large black man my blue card for my actual permit (after 4 layers of overlapping paperwork and running around counters to fix errors made by other workers) he told me it was going to expire soon and I had to retake the knowledge test. On the spot. At the touch screen station I was ushered to hastily, there was lots of  punching letters and then confirming that yes, indeed, I am sure you're supposed to stop on railway tracks when the red lights flash... right? The passing grade was 40/50, and at 32 right, I had 9 wrong. THIS close to needing to change my dungarees on the spot.

Previously, I've lamented the services of post office workers. In fact, I am now eternally grateful for the wonderful, luminescent, saintly workers of the post office. At least their faces aren't permanently fixed in grimaces and scowls; their mindset one of undying resentment of all humans brazen enough to appear before them... WELL. Am I excited for my driving test or what!

**If you are offended by the mildly offensive racial remarks here, please go chase yourself. And then accept my insincerest apologies.