Arrive Early and Bring a Good Book

A long time ago someone told me that the best way to be on time was to arrive early and bring a good book. Since then I have heard several times that on time is late and early is on time. I consider myself to be a punctual person and posses excellent time management skills. Tonight all of that was pushed to its limit.

My wife wanted to take our children to a trunk or treat at the mounted police barn. My wife likes horses and figured this would be a good way to see some and while trunk or treats are popular they usually aren’t crazy.

With this being a trunk or treat I figured it would be sometime in the afternoon but then it turned out to be at night. It was scheduled to run from 5:00-9:00 PM and I scheduled myself for a pet visit between 5:00-7:00 PM. With the old thoughts of arriving early and how on time was let (typically said by the exact type of people that run police trunk or treats) we showed up at 4:45. Figured this would give us a good bit of time to find a parking space and unload the children without too much line waiting.

This would have been an excellent plan but they weren’t letting anyone park until 5:00 PM. This baffled me beyond belief because the event started at 5:00. Imaging if a football game or concert both started at and opened parking at the exact same time. It seems crazy. It still seems crazy after having experienced it.

We had to drive past the parking area, turn around, and just as we made it back they were opening the parking area. We were probably the 50th or so car let in and it took us 15 minutes to reach the field where they were parking cars. Once parked we had to wait in a line outside the barn that took another 20 or so minutes and then finally we were through the first barn and into the indoor ring to get our boys their candy.

It was fun to watch them. One of the boys was super polite and took only one piece of candy. He even showed it to the person he was taking it from as if asking permission. The other son reached into the bucket and took handfuls at a time until he was told or made to stop.

Overall it was a fun time but with how inefficiently it was run it isn’t something we’re going to be doing again. There are plenty of other trunk or treat events around town that we don’t need that one.