I was late again. It was a bad habit of mine, being late. I couldn’t help it though, as my mother always said, ‘a lady is never late, everyone else is early’. But my boss wouldn’t take a Louisiana debutante’s words of wisdom as an excuse for my tardiness. Usually it wasn’t so bad but today the stars had aligned to wreck havoc on my day. The coffee maker which had been tottering on it’s last legs finally died so I had to stop at starbucks, I had left my wallet sitting on the kitchen counter making me miss my train and having to walk to work, and to top things off the weather as slowly turning my hair into a ball of fluff perched on my head. Maybe I could get Alex to cover for me at work. I walked along, thinking up excuses I could give  Maria that I hadn’t already used when I found myself sprawled on the sidewalk.