I was late for Mass once. My alarm didn't go off and I woke up 5 minutes before Mass was supposed to begin. I was out the door in three minutes and it took me two minutes to get to the church and one minute to get into the loft. I arrived at the sign of the cross and had my music all set by the Kyrie (but I was out of breath). If it had been the one priest, he would have waited a couple minutes to see if I showed, but the one who doesn't wait happened to be scheduled.

Now I set two alarms all the time.

I am not the organist, thank goodness.
In 25+ yrs, just once my clock failed me. By the time I arrived, the priest had already processed in, the Introit was under way.
>> Now I set two alarms all the time.
I don't always, but I sure should. Thanks for reminder

My worst nightmare was an actual nightmare. Confirmations were scheduled - max stress for me - and I dreamed that I showed up at the church and had left my Liber at home (about an hour's drive away). All my notes are in it, and nowhere else. Yikes was I glad to wake up from that one.
I have spent quarantine time duplicating those notes into files that someone else can hold onto... You never know.

Slept in XMAS MORNING one time and arrived at the homily during the 8 AM Mass. The music area was in the front of the church so I had to make the "walk of shame" while the priest was finishing the homily. I wanted to die.

I don't oversleep since I have three alarms. One, I have to get out of bed and walk across the room to turn off. Granted, the car could fail, a tree could fall across the road, or any number of unexpected events could make one late.

My bad dream of getting to mass late involved sitting at the organ waiting to begin the entrance hymn. First I noticed a speck of dust on the keys. Of course, I had to stop and clean it off. Then the organ mirror wasn't adjusted right so I had to fix that. Then I noted the mirror needed cleaning. The entrance hymn was, "Holy, Holy, Holy." Why that one, I have no idea. I found first one thing and then another that had to be fixed before I could play the first note. I dreamed I was never able to get beyond all these things and start playing. The whole time the congregation and priest were waiting. Why this dream at that time, I will never know. Crazy!

When I was young I could sleep through the second coming and not even notice. Until I went into the Army, that is. Getting up at 4:30 a.m. and such made me a much lighter sleeper. You know, have to hear the enemy approaching.

I was late for my first wedding. I think I was about 14. I was the "organist" for my tiny parish because there was no one else. One day I got a call from my pastor asking if I could play a wedding... NOW. I quickly got ready, found my dad so he could drive me over and played the wedding. I didn't know any wedding music at all. PTL they didn't have Youtube or FB back then or I would have been on a viral "can you believe it's THAT BAD" church music video.

I once was late to mass because I had a one-hour commute and got caught in a multi-mile traffic jam due to construction. I was normally 30 mins early and this time I sped like the dickens after clearing the mess and got there during the Gloria. To my great delight and surprise, the priest had started the gloria a cappella from memory on the right pitch. By the second phrase I came in on a soft string with the box closed (partly to make sure our pitches would match) and phrase by phrase I slowly added to the organ until I was back to normal by the end. Totally seamless entrance. Almost as if he had simply intoned the incipit and we had planned it. It was quite the experience and one I'll never forget. The Lord's providence is truly amazing!

_________
Unfortunately, this thread is very timely... This very weekend on Saturday morning, I received a call at 8:56am from the DRE asking where I was. It turns out, at some point I was dropped off the email thread when the date for FIRST COMMUNION was decided. "Didn't Father tell you?" "...no, he did not mention it..." I was shaking. Mass was supposed to start in 4 minutes and I had bed head and was just milling about the house in a pair of shorts.

I threw on my clothes and bolted to church on my bike. Mercifully for me, I live (currently) two blocks from church and can see the portico from my front porch. Mass only started 5 minutes late, and I simply grabbed the Fr. Weber chant book and sang the propers for Corpus Christi. It turned out there was both a 9am and 11am FC mass and no one had told me. Suffice to say, it made for a long and stressful morning, but mercifully my pastor was not upset with me. I did have to chuckle though, when I flew into the sacristy at 9:01 and he just looked at me and exclaimed, "I don't care! Just do anything!" and I bolted right back out the door.

Another memory for the annuls.

It's kind of funny, but I know people who are late to work nearly every day (for years) and get away with it. If we're late once, it's a big deal.

Isn’t that the truth, @TCJ ?!?!

Can I tell another musician’s worst nightmare?

A church organist I know was playing solo one day from an open hymnal, when the thing decided to snap shut and leap from the music rack
Striking each of the 3 manuals on the way down
before finally glancing off his leg and landing on the pedalboard.

mme - I watched (in the organists mirror) something similar happen to an elderly cathedral organist. He chased the heavy tome all the way down the keyboard from the middle and off the bottom end.

second priority.... resolve to stop playing from bound hymnals meant for hands to hold

(third priority - go have a talk with Mr Jack Daniels)

Francis - problem with humility is that it is so elusive. Self imposed exercises in this virtue are not effective, and whoever thinks she has developed it has surely not...

through experience, I learned some time ago that if the CD needs lessons in humility, it spells trouble for the choir … :-x

I was playing from a three-ring binder for a wedding. During the recessional, the binder decided to close on its own and leap off the music rack. Fortunately I had a quick-acting cantor who had decided to stay for the music instead of running off at first opportunity. She made a just-in-the-nick-of-time lunge and caught the binder before it could cause chaos. Later I found out that it was a faulty binder and the snaps didn't work properly on it. It went into the garbage.

TCJ your cantor’s reflexes are just short of angelic!

Two instances I can remember, only one of which was my fault:

(1) When I was in college I played for the 7:00 a.m. Mass at the parish in which I grew up and to which I returned after my family and I had moved away from there before my freshman year of high school. It was/is a very progressive parish where that was the only Mass time that seemed to appreciate any volume of more traditional music with any regularity (I would play many of the other Mass times as well - while I didn't care for much of the music, I loved the people with whom I got to work). One Saturday evening I forgot to turn my alarm clock on, only to wake up at 7:30 and break into a cold sweat. I threw on some clothes in the dark and drove to the church (since I was also scheduled to play the following Mass at 8:45 a.m.), arriving just as the 7:00 a.m. Mass was letting out. Fortunately that Mass also had a cantor who was very comfortable singing a cappella.

(2) I was substituting for a wedding about 45 minutes north of my parish for whom I nevertheless often assist for weddings and funerals semi-regularly, anyway. The music director told me it started at 11:00 a.m. Even when I'm the only musician as I was in this case, I like to arrive at least one hour early, and so I happened to get there right at 10:00 a.m. - as the wedding procession was forming in the back of the church! Thanks be to God someone else in the wedding party was also running late, and so I had a couple of minutes to get set up. Fortunately for me also the priest is a friend of mine who covered for me by saying I took this funeral on very short notice! It turns out I had been told the wrong time.

UPDATE on self-inflicted humiliation definition

I wasn't trying to self-inflict humility excersizes... my own ignorance brought it upon me.

Can I borrow some of your memory, Jackson?

Can I...

Chris -
Borrow?
Yes, I can lend you some if you want it.
I lend it out for two weeks.
There is a ten cent overdue charge for every day you are late returning it.

Jackson,

I would only be late in returning it if I somehow managed to forget that it was due, which would, of course, mean that it hadn't succeeded in improving my own memory.

Liam

Were you awake when this nightmare occurred?

I overslept once and got pulled over while I was speeding to the church. I got there about 30 seconds before the priest was ready to go. He asked if I was ready, I said "give me 2 seconds to catch my breath, then yes."

A couple weeks ago I accidentally set my alarm from 7:30 and not 6:30, so I would have missed 8 AM Mass completely. Thankfully the toddler was up and about making a mess in his room and woke us up, so it all worked out.

I have recurring dreams of being unprepared for Mass. It happens about every 2 weeks. It usually involved not being able to find my music in time and trying to play everything from memory while I make the walk of shame of being up to 30 minutes late. My old choir director at ND is usually there too, staring daggers at me while I get to the organ.

I have only a minor fail to add to these hilarious stories: the first Gregorian chant group I was ever in was made up of four of us who had taken an 8 week class together in the previous few months. One of us had gone to minor seminary, one (a German) had had choir experience, another had general music experience, and the other one didn't know how to read music and was teaching himself to sing in tune using a guitar tuner. So our cumulative singing skills were maybe a 3 out of 10, but boy were we enthusiastic. We just sang one of the common ordinaries, and since the Kyrie seemed particularly challenging the priest actually ran up the long flight of stone steps to the choir loft, gasped out the Kyrie with us to support us, and ran back down again to continue the Mass. I no longer remember why he did that - he could have just sung from the altar, surely. In any case, at the end of a very awkward clamber through the long-suffering ordinary we stumbled down the stairs and out into the sacristy. The priest gave us a baleful stare and said "That was just terrible!!" (which would be normal coming from any American, but that kind of blunt criticism is really unusual in Brazil). The German just sat with his head in his hands, grieving for the shame of it all. I do give kudos to the priest for continuing to support the group (which still sings years later, having expanded their minimalist repertory and now singing in tune and together.). I still drop by to sing with them once in a while.

One Sunday during the anthem I turned a certain page whose staple had come loose. It ripped off and went wafting over the gallery rail, falling like a leaf down into the nave. Fortunately I had the work memorised so there was no disaster, only amusement (some of the choir managed a discreet smirk or a muffled chuckle as the anthem came to an end). When the anthem was over a kind lady from the congregation brought the page up to me. (More amusement.)

Actually, Incardination has mentioned it on here before. Just search for "Appreciation for Richard Chonak" and look up that discussion.

Tandrews

Guess they would be considered hells bells at that point?