For All You Time Wasters --DeWese

My Pa would show up and pontificate from his soap box, “How can you waste your time with that ‘damn tom foolery?’ You can never get this time back. A minute saved is a minute earned. Now, git out there and feed the chickens.”

Pa would light in to me about being a “laggard,” That name “Laggard the Louse” stuck for a long time, until the mid-1980s, while I was writing for this very magazine. A snooty editor called me the “Mañana Man,” referring to the fact that I was 11 days late with my column. She assumed that I ‘no habla español,’ so I wouldn’t be insulted. Little did she know that I had taken Spanish 1 three times while I was procrastinating my way through college. Unfortunately, I never passed the course, but I did learn to order food, drink and the meaning of Mañana.