On Facebook yesterday, someone had posted “Today is Be Late for Something Day. What is your main character late for?”
Punctuality is something that I have struggled with all my life. Not because I intend to be late for things, but because I just am very poor at judging how long it will take me to get to where I am going. My husband, on the other hand, does not struggle with this affliction, and finds it quite irritating when I cause him to be late. (He is a very patient man and suffers with dignity and an occasional growly grumble under his breath.)
This made me start thinking about characters that might also struggle with being on time or characters that are always on time but events arrange themselves to cause the normally punctual hero to be late for an important event. The short story, Though the Universe Conspires, is the result of that thinking.