tales of a procrastination queen

2005-10-31 - 4:41 p.m.

Thinking about it, it is just ever so slightly insane that I'm taking on something like nano. Not just for the obvious reasons over total overload, but because I in particular am rather known to be a procrastination queen.

This was always a problem when I was a child. It was perhaps more of a problem for my mother than it was for me as I caused her no end of frustration by putting off projects, chores, homework and anything else I could until the last moment or, more delicious still, until PAST the last moment. I had the sort of teachers in elementary school who were thrilled to enable my procrastination habit. "Oh, we know she's late, but we just know that when she turns it in it will be just WONDERFUL!" they would tell my mother in parent-teacher conferences. She'd set her mouth and come home to find that, as she expected, I'd not even started on the project. Mobile? Oh, right, I think I have a hanger around here somewhere. Sure.

The grand high point of my procrastination was a science fair project in middle school. I put it off and put it off. Finally about a week before it was due, I realized I'd better start my experiment. My project was about various ways to protect metal from rust so that meant I needed to develop some rust right quickly.

For future reference, should you ever need to purposely rust some metal strap, I highly recommend spritzing it with salt water from an old hair spray can.

Miraculously rust appeared and was actually on the pieces I needed it to appear on in order to prove my hypothesis correct. That just left the small matters of the report and the display to deal with.

Sunday, the day before they were due, my mother was climbing the ceiling but privately reveling in the fact that this was finally the one time I'd learn my lesson that I needed to plan rather than procrastinate.

I put together my paper and then started on the foam core display. I was working on the dining room table Sunday evening. When I went upstairs to fetch more markers, tragedy struck. My kitten jumped onto the table in my absence, chewing and clawing the top edge of my display board into a gnarled, unpresentable mess.

The only thing I could do to hide the tooth and claw marks was to run a bold red strip of racer's tape along the length of the top edge. I ran a similar strip along the bottom to balance it out.

Not only did I get a ribbon in the science fair and a great grade on the project, but I actually got feedback from the judges that they really loved the striped edges...that they really made my board stand out. Heh.

Needless to say, I never really learned my lesson on that one.

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Pretend it's 10th grade. Leave me a note.

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