Tim and I have a mixed marriage.

Not really religion :  even though we’re technically of two different faith traditions, we’ve found we often have more in common with each other than either of us has with most of the rest of our respective tribes.

Not sports teams:  I converted.

And of course, we’re both lawyers.  I have *no* idea how mixed marriages between lawyers and non-lawyers work.  What on Earth do they talk about?

No, Tim and I are a mixed marriage with respect to time.  I’m analog.  He’s digital.

For example, I don’t believe that the time of day comes in chunks smaller than five minutes.  So I would no more say “it’s 12:37” than I’d say “it’s 12:37:42.03.”  It’s either 12:35 or 12:40.  And truthfully, I’m much more likely to see this

and say “twelve thirty” or “quarter of one.”  Because really, who needs to know that it’s “twenty-five of one?”   In fact, I’m likely to see this:

and say  “twelve thirty” or “quarter of one.”  This, of course, drives Tim up the wall.

When we first met, my watch looked like this:

That’s right — no numbers whatsoever.*   Do you really need them?  Look at that watch face.  You know all you need to know about the time:  it’s that time of the afternoon when you should start thinking more seriously about what you are going to eat for dinner.

I’m also generally late.  This is based on (1) my refusal to remember the digits to the right of the colon in the start time of any event and (2) the fact that when that time rolls around, I view it as my signal to start getting ready to go.  Thus, if I were in charge of getting us on a 12:37 flight, I would internalize it as “12 something,” and at 12 something,  start to think about packing for the trip.  This is why I am *never* in charge of getting us to the airport on time.  Occasionally, on a lark, I take charge of some lesser event, say, dinner reservations at a steak joint where they know us, we’re not meeting anyone, and if I totally screw it up, we can eat in the bar.   I can usually get us there within 20 minutes one side or the other of when we’re supposed to be there.

Where it really gets interesting, however, is where Tim is forced reassert control over the time situation.  This is when we discovered his time-bending abilities.  For example, if we’re supposed to be at his parents’ house at noon….  Pause to explain that in the Fox family, the time gene follows the paternal line.  This was clearly not so in our family, where my father had more or less my attitude and aptitude toward time and my mother and brother share Tim’s precision.  But when we’re set to meet the Foxes at, say, noon, we generally get a call at 11:55 asking our ETA.  (Love you, Denver!)

Back to time-bending.  If I’ve managed to make us late — say, just as a hypothetical, by waiting for the actual necessary departure time to begin a long list of pre-departure tasks (change clothes, brush teeth, gather miscellaneous items that belong in my purse, put the dogs out, wait several minutes for Saguaro to select the optimum location to pee, bring the dogs in, locate my coat, etc.) — Tim will reassert control over time.  This is not an adversarial process.  It’s not “Dammmit, we need to get going.”  It’s the fact that once Tim is in the car with me, a trip that — based on the speed limit, the physical capabilities of the van, and the theory of relativity as I understand it — takes 30 minutes will in fact take 10 minutes.  I have no idea how he does it.  We call it “Timmifying time” and it has to be used judiciously, as randomly Timmifying any given trip has the risk of getting you to your destination very early, leaving you as, say, the first two people to arrive at a heinously boring bar dinner.  In those situations, we retroactively Amify the time by stopping at the actual bar and preparing ourselves, chemically AND chronologically, for the event.

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* My watch would still look like this if I could find one for under $25.  I bought this for a couple of bucks in Hong Kong in about 1984 and it long ago gave up the ghost.  Unfortunately, I don’t buy nice watches for the same reason I don’t buy nice pens:  I lose them.  I long ago figured out that this wasn’t going to change, and that rather than freaking out over losing an expensive watch, I would simply buy Timexes or Swatches and replace them as needed.