Bellowing Turtle

Our Sunday Scribblings Prompt was Late.

I'm sitting here shaking my head in wonder. My husband has once again proven the validity of his nickname. Thirty minutes ago we received a call from one of the church families. They needed a visit from the pastor--something about wanting him to talk to their neighbor--so my husband obligingly agreed, saying, "Sure, I'll be there in fifteen minutes," and he hung up.

Now I happen to know that the aforementioned family lives about eighteen miles from our house--not so far away, but I also know that with the speed limit being as low as it is, the construction zone being particularly sloppy, and snow lightly falling on the newly-rained-on road, it will take at least twenty five minutes for him to get there. However, I've have lived with this man for thirty years and learned when to keep my mouth shut. He moseyed around for a few minutes, unwrapped and ate a low-fat, sugar-free fudge bar from the freezer--hey, I'm trying--and headed out to his pick-up. Suddenly, he was back in the kitchen, having run across two UPS boxes that had been delivered to our back door. My husband derives great pleasure from opening boxes with new stuff in them. Even though he knew exactly what was supposed to be in each one, he proceeded to open them and count the items--9 black sharpie pens in one and a multi-pack of sharpie pens in the other. Then he explained why he really preferred that kind of pen, why they had to arrive in two boxes, how he could have misunderstood and thought he was getting half black and half blue in the multi-pack when it actually contained a lot of colors that are not manly enough for him, namely aqua, purple, baby blue and pink.

Meanwhile, my blood pressure was steadily rising. I just wanted to push him out the door. Not because I particularly wanted to get rid of him; I just couldn't help but remember that he had said "fifteen minutes" and that was fifteen minutes ago.

Some people, like my husband, have no sense of time. For others, days go by in measured hours. I'm, unfortunately, one of the latter. I'm even used to bells sounding out the end of each hour. I push myself to exercise until the "long hand reaches the four", or until "the second movement of the first symphony is over", or until "the calorie count reaches one hundred" on the treadmill. He would argue that fifteen minutes really just means "a little while".

Strangely enough, the man has never been able to wear a wristwatch. Over the years he has bought and been given many. They do fine for a little while, but they always begin to lose time eventually. After a week or so they are at least twenty minutes behind. I know that this doesn't make scientific sense--batteries should not be subject to taking on the characteristics of their humans. Never-the-less, something slows them down when he wears them on his wrist. If he wants to know what time it is, he has to carry a pocket watch or a cell phone.

So it is fortunate that we are together, I guess. I push him to do things on time. He makes me slow down and turn that type A personality into a type A minus. Tick...tick...tick. Did I say I was a little ticked? (Ok. I apologize for that terrible pun.)