Bill Clinton, Franz Kafka, George McClellan, Leonardo Da Vinci, Truman Capote, Hamlet, Abraham Lincoln…
What did all these people have in common?
They were goddamned PROCRASTINATORS, that’s what they were!
Those horrible people who are putting off until tomorrow what should have been done yesterday!
To be or not to be?
What kind of wishy-washy prince is this? Off with his head!
One of my (many) failings is the fact that I am impatient.
I won’t deny it; like Athena I was born fully-grown, armed and in a hurry.
My kind doesn’t fancy waiting and despises lollygaggers.
Unfortunately it seems that I am surrounded by those #@*&%!
Like bedbugs, procrastinators appear to be everywhere, even in our little club.
It has come to my attention that some people (in spite of repeated warnings) were late in renewing their annual club’s subscription.
As prescribed by our bylaws, they were fined a $5.00 late fee for this infraction; most paid up but some objected.
Well fellow “boulophiles”, I don’t have the slightest sympathy for those individuals.
The IRS gave you a deadline for paying your taxes and they don’t care about your measly excuses.
Pay up or shut up, they politely say.
And so should our club say!
None of the great feats of human daring could have taken place with some indecisive dawdler at the helm!
Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Horatio Nelson, Theodore Roosevelt, George Patton… those people were not in the habit of postponing anything!
I don’t think that Napoleon would have tolerated any procrastinator in his staff.
One his cavalry generals, Antoine-Charles-Louis de Lasalle famously said:
« Tout hussard qui n’est pas mort à trente ans est un jean-foutre. »
Any hussar who is not dead by the age of thirty is a jackass, or a “tosser” as our friends across the pond would say.
To avoid being called a procrastinator general Lasalle managed to get killed at the battle of Wagram in 1809. He was 34.
To sum it up ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do not be a procrastinator and don’t wait to be bitten in the “derriere” to fulfill your obligations.
I rest my case.
Alain