Just read Terri’s blog about gray areas, how she is not a gray area person, how she even asked her OB/GYN what time her first child would be born.  That’s my Terri!  I am a gray area person. I kid my patients that I don’t know why I don’t just say our appointments are at 10:10 a.m. instead of 10:00 a.m., since I’m always about ten minutes late – like clockwork, actually.  It’s as if I watched too much Star Trek as a kid and just believe I can be “beamed” wherever I am going, that it doesn’t take real time to get there.

This got me thinking about my Joe.  Joe is a percussionist, and God Himself could keep time by Joe’s sense of rhythm.  Although he certainly went through his period of messy room-dom, he is now a very orderly person.  I know when he comes home I just drive him crazy with my clutter tendencies. 

It was another black and white friend who taught me to appreciate Joe’s tendencies towards the fastidious.  John is a pharmacist, and thank God he is also “that way,” or people could be getting the wrong medicines.  Our two families were camping up on the north coast, Joe was probably about 8 or 9, and had himself a little kid’s digital watch,  a big clunky thing, the kind with a timer and sports stopwatch all in one. We were setting up camp for dinner and the evening fire, and someone asked me what time it was. I glanced at my watch and said “5:20” and within seconds a little voice piped up “”5:23.”  I looked at John, shook my head and rolled my eyes and without taking a breath John rose to Joe’s defense: “No!  I like the precision!”  Well, of course he would.  I realized at that moment that Joe’s precision was there for a reason.  A pharmacist?  No, he would turn out to be a mathematician.

My Dad was the same way, I can hear him correct the time to 10:05 versus 10:00. Were he my home health patient I would definitely have to warn him of my time issues on the first visit.  He was that way with mileage signs on the highway – Mom would muse after passing a sign that St. Louis was 100 miles.  Dad would correct her: 116.    She would shake her head but he would defend himself this way, and he’s right: if you don’t KNOW that it’s 116, then round it off to 100, but if the sign clearly states 116, why not say it exactly?  That could lead me into another tale of surviving long marriages, but I have to get going or I’m going to be late.