The Columnist Manifesto

This fall, I'm trying to avoid scheduling meetings past 11:30 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have a power skating class through the University that meets 12-1 on those days. My game plan is to skate the class, shower (I've mentioned that I get kind of sweaty skating), grab some lunch and then teach my 2:30-4:30 class.

Unfortunately, today there was a meeting that could only be scheduled today because of the vacation schedule of one of the organizers. I said "yes" to a 1-2 p.m. meeting even though I knew I'd be really pressed for time, it being the first week of classes. I said "I'll be there by 1:10."

At 1:10 I was in the basement parking lot changing from my sweatclothes into professor clothes, and with salty sweat drying on my skin, showed up at the meeting looking professorial (if harried) but feeling like I badly needed a shower.

I arrived at 1:20 ready to unleash the following diatribe at the first sideways glance at being late for my late arrival:

Any meeting time this week was exceedingly inconvenient, but I've made every exertion to be here in order to accommodate someone else's vacation schedule. And it's none of your business what I was doing just prior to our meeting and why I'm all sweaty.

Is it not a great waste of energy to compose such angry speeches? In the event, the meeting participants were all sweetness and light. and no one asked me what I'd been doing.

INTERNET POLL QUESTION: The shower is really inconvenient to the rink and the hockey lockers, to the point where I'm considering stopping at a whole other gym (where I have a locker located more conveniently located to the showers) to take my shower.

My T, Th class meets 24 more times this semester. On how many of those class meeting times will I fail to shower? 0? 5? 10? 24?