With Procrastination Station As My Destination, The Tracks Led To Uglyville

This page under construction. If procrastination does not win out, the page will be complete no later than 10 p.m. on 1-30-08.

My name is James Fuhriman, the author of Procrastination Station. When I first submitted my poem to Fred through his Contact Us form on this site, he immediately set up the beginnings of this page with that first paragraph below the headline (I had written the headline itself).

I was anxious to see my work in print, so I checked back a lot. He got it done in less than a day, but hey, I never had anything published before. You know? The thing was, he had deleted that first part HE had written. I asked him to put it back in, and he did. I felt that was important.

Because it made my whole point.

In those opening words, he had set a self-imposed deadline that would be potentially embarrassing if he did not meet it. And THAT is what finally worked for me.

(To feel like you've had a month's rest on the beach, click on the hammock!)

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I grew up near the railroad tracks
Proud of our great nation
But sadly my personal locomotive led
To Procrastination Station
I would put off taking out the trash
Till the truck was in the drive
Even though Mommy threatened many times
To pretty much skin me alive

When it came to gritting out the grades
One by one at school
I could put off putting pencil to paper
Till the principal turned blue
None of this muchly bothered me
Until long after I got engaged
Being late to your own wedding
Can leave your bride-to-be enraged

While my six kids were growing up
I never realized
They would tell me where they needed to be
An hour ahead of time
But finally in my mid-fifties
A deadline hit me hard
Either I started losing weight
Or I'd be pushing up daisies in my own back yard

My wife hauled me off to a specialist
Who called himself Doctor Bill
The man put me on diet and exercise
And my wife made me watch Doctor Phil
Day after day and week after week
It was pounded into my mind
No matter whatever might have gone before
The deadline really meant DEAD this time

Now I'm finally back to my old fighting size
And I have to admit it feels great
Every pound I'm packing has a job to do
And I'm hardly ever ever late
Only after I'd been this new man for a while
Did my honey admit what she'd done
Hired an out of work actor to play Doctor Bill
And scared me nearly into coming undone

When I looked at her with a raised eyebrow
She shrugged and said she had just been scared
Until she read a classic book called Psycho-Cybernetics
And used what she found in there
It seems if you run from an old tree stump
Who cares if was not a real bear?
To me that Dead deadline was really real
And I'm not ever going back there!

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Publisher's note: James and I had the opportunity to get fairly well acquainted just recently. Listening to him (and his wife) now, it is almost impossible to imagine that procrastination used to be a huge problem in his life.

Thanks for reading,

Fred

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