If you were to ask the staff at Truck News when I normally turn in my column to the editor – they would to a soul say at the last minute.

Of the one hundred and fifty plus columns I’ve written I’ve never missed press and you could count on one hand the number of times I’ve been early.

As I write this column I am running the distinct risk of being early.

I call it a risk because it takes years to train the staff into accepting my eleventh hour musings, if I suddenly produce earlier I may create false expectations, we can’t have that.

Interestingly enough, the reason I could be early is due to the fact that I am waiting for someone else, an irony that won’t be lost on the production and editorial teams at Truck News.

I’m stuck in my home, it’s the middle of the day – appointments are being rearranged – life is on hold – I await the plumber.

As I impatiently sit here it dawns on me that I have made significant errors in raising my children.

My kids were going to university, they were going to get an education, they would be professionals, yada yada yada.

My son, the professional high school teacher, arrives at work every day on time, inspires his students, and comes home each night to hours of marking double cohort English essays, albeit he is not marking now.

He is somewhere north of Thunder Bay leading a group of “youth at risk” on a twenty one day canoe trip.

My eldest daughter has just come home with a brand new degree from Carleton University.

She wonders what she will be when she grows up, in the meantime she is a bartender, a paying skill she picked up during her college years.

There is still hope for my youngest, she has just finished high school and is traveling for a year before deciding what she wants to do.

Maybe just maybe I can convince her to take up a trade.

From my current vantage point the trades look pretty good.

After your apprenticeship you have a skill people need and are willing to pay big bucks for.

A good example is this plumber I have been waiting the past three hours for.

When he finally arrives I’ll be happy to see him and only he knows how much I’ll have to pay him. I can tell you nobody waits three hours for a publisher.

Well maybe on occasion production and editorial staff have had to.

Thanks to a tardy plumber they won’t be waiting for this column.