To Be Too Late

There was this very helpful and concerned fella who used to come into the old barn, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who really cared about our well being. Indeed whenever we might face peril, he'd call out a warning. Trouble was, his warnings were always just a tad too late. Or at least, late enough that they'd have been no help at all.

"Watch it Phil!' he'd yell to me brother just exactly one instant after Phil had lost his grip on something and it fell to the floor, shattering. 

"Watch it Marty!" he'd scream at me the very moment after the tool I was using under pressure had slipped and was flying across the Shop.

"Watch it Bill!" Cloyce would belatedly warn me Pops precisely when a red hot fitting he had been heating had already popped out of the bench vise and just missed falling into his boot. 

To this day whenever I have narrowly averted catastrophe I can hear Cloyce's panicked yell, "Watch it Marty!"

Cloyce's warnings were truly just in time to be too late. Every. Single. Time. But I suppose he meant well.