Value every minute

I love this poem. It's so true and incredibly inspiring. The author is unknown, so I'll plagarise it here:

To realise the value of one year: Ask a student who has failed a final exam.
To realise the value of one month: Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.
To realise the value of one week: Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.
To realise the value of one hour: Ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.
To realise the value of one minute: Ask the person who has missed the train, bus or plane.
To realise the value of one second: Ask a person who has survived an accident.
To realise the value of one millisecond: Ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics.
Time waits for no one.
Treasure every moment you have. You will treasure it even more when you can share it with someone special.

OK, enough of the sentimentality. Café Chick's motives here are actually quite cheeky ...

Yesterday, I experienced a twist to this poem. I was invited to a friend's daughter's christening. It wasn't exactly something I was looking forward to; their first daughter's christening had its share of family dramas, which I'm thankful are mostly resolved now, but that's not the reason I was hoping to wrangle out of the invitation.

I really wasn't looking forward to facing the judge, jury, or any other members of the So have you sorted your life out yet? No? Well, you should just ... otherwise it's all your own fault Squad. This honorary society was formed a number of years ago and is made up of mostly school-friends, along with a collection of other acquaintances, some of whom know my family (and barely know me), but each have in common one or more (or a clean sweep!) of the following (none of which I have):

• a husband
• child/ren
• a picket fence and matching lifestyle in suburbia.

I had already planned to get my sweetie off the hook by saying he was at motorsport that day. (I actually thought he was going to be, but kept to the story even after we realised he wasn't.) I was trying to manufacture a way to put in an appearance, then leave as soon as I could after the service. My 'reason' turned out to be genuine; I was all set for the christening at 3.30pm.

Except it started at 3pm. Arriving at what I thought was ten minutes early, I gritted my teeth and prepared myself to walk into the onslaught, only to find everyone vacating the church and heading downstairs to the hall for afternoon tea. The service had finished; apparently it went well. Hmm, now what to do?

I was naughty. I popped downstairs, chatted briefly to various people from the squad (as well as the baby's parents and grandparents), then said my goodbyes and quietly slipped out. So far, I don't think anyone realised I missed the actual service; they just seem to think they didn't see me at the church because I was sitting at the back, or something! Talk about the value of twenty minutes ...

And that's the way it's going to stay. ;-)