Better Late Than Never?

My dear husband just wrote a post on his blog about his (and my) #1 Pet Peeve - Being Late.
As I thought about the comment I was going to leave on his blog I decided that, since it was going to be more of a dissertation than a comment, I would write my own post about it. So here we go...

My number one pet peeve is being late. I can't stand to be late, my husband can't stand to be late, and my children can't stand to be late.
It started in my childhood, back in the days before cell phones. Yes, there used to be a time without cell phones. Then there came a time of HUGE car phones. Anyway, back in the day my family used to go a lot of places and meet up with a lot of people. Mom and Dad always used the 15 minute rule, it goes like this. Let's say we were going to meet another family downtown and go window shopping, wait, that is something my dad would never do. Let's say we are in the mountains skiing with several other families and we decide that after skiing we will all meet at a certain place at 6:00 and go to dinner. Dad would say we would use the 15 minute rule which states that at 6:15 whoever is there leaves and goes to dinner, no hard feelings. Everyone knew that they had a 15 minute window and then everyone was leaving. No one got mad and if someone was late they would always apologize profusely.
After I got married, my dh and I took a parenting class and one of the lessons solidified my inner most need to be on time. The lesson was about stealing. Yes, stealing. The writer of the program stated that people who you can count on to be late are STEALING. They are stealing your precious time. Time that you can never get back. Now, they were not talking about a person being occasionally late, we get it, things happen. They were talking about taking responsibility for ones actions and respecting others enough to regularly show up on time. THAT stuck with me.
If I am late I am not showing respect to the other person and I am stealing from them. I do not want to represent myself that way.
This is how it works at our house. We generally plan to leave in enough time to get where we need to be 15 minutes EARLY. 10 minutes if it is right here in town. That way, even if things come up - they normally do- a lost shoe, a pit stop, I can't find my keys, we still have a window of time. Having that window of time decreases our stress levels IMMENSELY! We arrive leisurely and are often able to help with any last minutes preparations or it gives us a chance to sit in the car and talk, uninterrupted by technology for a few minutes.
So, I am still striving for us to be known as the family that is always 10 minutes early!
If I get to your house 10 minutes early I have probably been driving around wasting time for 10 minutes so as not to some over TOO early! And if I am right on time, I am stressed. If, for some reason I am late, please know that it was something VERY out of the ordinary and I will apologize profusely!
The last thing I want to do is to steal from my friends.
So, there is my dissertation. I hope you have learned something about me you did not know before!