Monday, September 28, 2009

ISTJ meets INFP

Here's a semi-interesting story from my day (interesting to me, anyway) that gives a glimpse into how different my husband and I are. It's almost a typical day in the life of the Daltons.
 
This morning I got up and got ready for work like usual. I left on time, swung by Starbucks (yum) for a treat, and made it down 71 before the "oh my God, the roads are wet! Let's all go 5 mph!" traffic jam started, and I arrived at work at the usual time. In my mind, everything was going well until I reached for my keys to turn the car off and noticed that there was a much bigger wad of keys there than I am used to grabbing. Uhhhh, those aren't my keys...
 
Somehow, in my half-asleep, pre-caffeinated blur of a leaving-the-house routine this morning, I had grabbed Craig's keys and left mine on the table. Maybe for most households, this wouldn't be a problem, but in our case, the keys in my hand held the key to Craig's work truck. Problem. I then grabbed for my purse, certain that there would be like five missed calls on there, one for each level of panic as my husband nervously tried to alert me of my error before it completely screwed up his schedule for the day.
 
...Except my phone wasn't in my purse. I imagined on the kitchen table, lying innocently (or maybe smugly--I haven't decided) next to my keys.
 
Crap. I then grabbed my stuff and flew up to my office (well, "flew" might be an overstatement, considering I work on the 5th floor and spent a few minutes waiting impatiently for an elevator) where I threw it all on my desk and dialed Craig's cell number from my work phone.
 
Voice mail.
 
Are you kidding me? Aren't you wondering where your keys are? If it were me, I'd be glued to the phone. This was the first moment since we disconnected our landline a month ago that I wished we still had it. The only time that phone ever rang was (a) when a telemarketer was calling or (b) when one of us really needed to reach the other one but couldn't get through on the cell. Dang it. At this point, I left a frantic voice mail ("IhaveyourkeysI'msorryIleftmyphoneathomeI'mleavingrightnowIshouldbethereby8") and ran back down to the car (re: "ran," see previous disclaimer).
 
On my way home, all I heard on the radio was how the southbound lanes of both 315 and 71 were backed up almost to 270 (as I whizzed past the parking lot on 71 going the other direction...the direction I would soon be going on my way back to work), apparently because it rained overnight. Columbus drivers, you are seriously a bunch of sissies. WTH.
 
When I arrived home, sweaty and freaking out, I found Craig in the kitchen, cool as a cucumber. He actually laughed when he saw me fly through the door. "Forget something?"
 
It's days like today when I am grateful that I married a man with a personality nearly the opposite of mine. Some people might have been afraid of the wrath they'd face at home after a blunder like that. I was just worried that I'd make him late for his first job (which wasn't, as it turns out, until 10am, so the only thing he was "late" for was driving to the office to drink coffee and kill some time). And you know what, even if he had had an 8:00 job and I'd made him late, he still wouldn't have been mad.
 
I took the through-town route on my way back to work and arrived around 8:30. The whole debacle gouged a nice hour out of my morning, but other than that, it left me amused at my freaky-outy reactions to things and the contrast of my husband's mellow, go-with-the-flow approach to life. Yeah, we're good for each other. 

1 comment:

  1. My husband and I reach panic mode at different rates. He completely goes completely bonkers immediately and I freak out at the last minute. We were quite the sight to see in Traffic Court this afternoon when I finally started to panic and we were both a bundle of nerves.

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