Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 186, 27 October 1927, Page 5

Mundane Musings

The “Haven’t Time” Girl Have you ever noticed that the people who really have the least time generally manage to do everything they want to? Compare them with the girl who says she “never has time for anything.” Can you hear those feverishly - scuttling footsteps upstairs? Did you feel a hurricane go through the house as the door was violently slammed? Do you see a figure wildly tearing down the street—scarf flying, gloves clutched in one hand, one button of her coat undone? It’s the “haven’t time” girl. You know her, and I know her, and don’t we sometimes wish we didn’t! She’s generally a dear, but oh! so upsetting to ordinary, everyday folk. And she has just as much time as other people—sometimes more. But to hear her talk you’d think she never has a minute to breathe. In fact, that’s just what she does say. “I haven’t a second to breathe, my dear,’ she’ll exclaim. “I’m meeting a friend for lunch, then going out to tea, and there’s that dance to-morrow, and I haven’t bought my stockings. Oh dear, I can see myself dancing with bare legs, like a Highlander.” And so on. She is breathless, and she leaves everybody else breathless. Other girls, who have far more to do, manage to go out to tea and luncheon and dances without half the fuss. They don’t waste so much time talking about what they do, or don’t do. For the “haven’t time” girl never accomplishes half the things she babbles about. She always has a bad memory, too. She forgets, for instance, to engage rooms for her holidays, and then she moans and muddles when she suddenly remembers. Some kind soul comes to the rescue, and our heroine sails gaily on, keeping to the qld* hur[ried, breathless, ragid routes . _ r

She thinks, of course, that she accomplishes mountains of work, but most of the work that she rattles through at top speed has to be done over again, by herself or somebody else. So that in spite of her rapid methods, accompanied by that ferocious do-it-or-die gleam in her eyes that we all know so well, she really gets along about as quickly as a rheumatic tortoise. And it’s a pity someone can’t tell her so. Only nobody does. I’d almost rather have a girl be a stodge!