the earliest I've ever been

This evening I showed up to a friend's surprise birthday party a week early.

It happened this way. After buying some beer and taking the bus to her house, I walked up to her door, sure that I wasn't going to be the first guest there and pretty sure that I wasn't going to be the last. Perfect timing, in other words. I found it a little odd that (a) the door was locked and (b) there wasn't a large crowd of surprise-birthday-wishers inside, so I knocked and one of her housemates opened the door a crack. I hesitated. "Is this where L's thing is?" Her eyes got wide. "That's next week."

I got embarrassed and wanted to disappear. I apologized and explained that I just got back into town today, which is obviously an invalid excuse for not reading the date of the invitation, but it was out of my mouth before that occurred to me. And then I smiled and said, well, I guess I'll see you in 7 days, and then I hurried off, hoping she would immediately forget what I looked like. And that was that.

On the way home I had two thoughts: (1) that was really embarrassing, and (2) that was probably the earliest I've ever been for anything, notwithstanding the guilty sensation of feeling a million years early when trying and failing to coordinate orgasms. And then I got to thinking, maybe I can eliminate this embarrassment by intentionally being even earlier for some other occasion.