For most people, moving and a trip to Kragen Auto Parts have absolutely nothing to do with each other. You go to Kragen when you feel the need for an auto part; you move when you feel the need to drive yourself crazy with boxes and lifting and not knowing where in the hell you packed your underwear.
Anyway, despite this apparent mutual exclusivity, I recently found myself at Kragen Auto Parts on what had become a distinctively move-related trip:
1. About seven months ago, my car needed a new starter part and a new water pump.
2. I have been carrying around the cores for these two parts ever since in my car's trunk, meaning to take them back to Kragen to get my core deposits back.
3. I just now returned these cores, because I need the trunk space to haul some of my crap to my new place.
No, I do not have some strange fetish that comes along with toting around random auto parts for the better part of the year; I am simply a procrastinator. And a damn good one at that. After all, the parts were doing me no harm sitting in my trunk, but when it came to the point that they could be a problem, I took care of them.
I wait until the last minute on virtually everything, but I am rarely ever late. I came into the world this way; I was due "around" February 11. I showed up on February 12, the last possible day I could be born on what would be considered "around" February 11. And I suspect that if I were to fall ill one day and, for example, be given three months to live by a doctor, I'll be around until 11:59 p.m. on the three-month anniversary of that doctor's proclamation.
My family marvels at how I manage to live my life like this. If I have to be somewhere at noon, and that somewhere is a 12-minute trip away, I leave at 11:48. There's no point to leave early; if I were to leave at 11:45, I'd encounter an extra three minutes worth of traffic and end up being exactly on time anyway.
I have no idea why I am this way; maybe it's a journalist thing. As a whole, all journalists are procrastinators. But it's also true that all newspaper folk who are work a nickel don't miss deadlines. They're never early for deadlines, either; if there's a 1 p.m. deadline, the earliest that story will be turned in is 12:58. And that two-minute difference would only be because the writer wrote in little bit of a hurry because he/she had to go to the bathroom.
We have the uncanny ability to subconsciously know how long it takes to write a story. Scientists would study to see why this is, but scientists are too busy worrying about other things such as writing grant proposals at the last possible second before they are due. This is because scientists are procrastinators, too.
Anyway, I am writing this column during breaks from packing for my move. Now, I have known that I would be moving, and I have known exactly when I would be moving -- and when I would need to be out of this apartment -- for over a month.
I started packing: last night. I get into my new apartment: tomorrow. Did I take any time off of work? Nope.
Am I worried that I won't get everything done that I need to get done, such as packing, cleaning and humor columns? You bet.
But deep-down logically, do I know that everything will indeed get done when it needs to? Yes.
And I can predict the time that everything will get done, too. Seeing as I have to have everything out of here and my keys turned in by Friday at 5, I'll be done and at the apartment office no sooner or later than 4:59, as the receptionist is just getting up to turn around the closed sign.
I know this, for I am a procrastinator. And I'm a damn good one at that.
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation who is having nightmares about boxes and packing tape. Of course, this is normal for him. Jimmy's columns appear here Tuesdays, and an archive of columns may be viewed at http://geocities.datacellar.net/jiboegle.