Saturday, March 28, 2009

A STUDY IN CONTRAST


If you ever wanted to see a study in contrast, come spend a day with Lois and I.
Physically, we are very similar in stature, hair color, and even some features. Spend ten minutes with us and you will see that is where the similarities end. Some of our differences are superficial, I wouldn’t be caught dead in clothes that don’t match, and she on the other hand has no concept that black and blue only look good together in a bruise. The differences that are no superficial are just as obvious, our approach to life in general is exactly opposite. I’m the queen of organization; she is the dictionary definition of chaos.

When I get up in the morning, there is a very definite order to things. A shower, followed by blow dryer, then lotion, then makeup, then clothes that have been well thought out and ironed. The finishing touches include jewelry and a curling iron. Lois’s morning consists of a shower and clothes pulled from a pile in chair that she has mistaken for a bureau for the last ten years. Needless to say, she spends a lot of time impatiently waiting for me to be ready.

I am NOT a morning person. My idea of an early morning is being awake before 8:30 am. I love to lounge in the morning. If I’m not working, being ready for the day at 10:00 am is fine by me. Lois LOVES mornings. Trying to convince her that 10:00 am is still part of the morning has become a fruitless effort. She is up with the birds, feeding them. She has the paper from the box, breakfast cooked, the paper read, and all of her morning activities done by 7:00 am. I guess that’s okay on workdays, but that is a seven day a week routine for her.

Well, we are finally ready for the day and off we go. I enjoy taking my time to each our final destination. Little detours are the best part of the trip for me. If I see a place or a shop that looks interesting I am ready to stop. As long as we get where we are going on time I could make 20 stops per trip. She finds my little detours amazing; given my sense of organization they drive her crazy. She can’t relax until we are at our final destination. If we are headed to Boston, she would be happy with potty stops only. A six o’clock check in means we drive straight there, even if it means we arrive at one-thirty. I find that quite humorous, as she is the most chaotic and unorganized person I know.

One would think how does this work? They must drive each other crazy! For all the differences we have, and I have really only listed a few, we have one important similarity, tolerance. We are at an age, that we have come to understand, being different is okay. She lets me sleep in the morning, and I in turn will check in at one-thirty, before making any unscheduled stops. Contrast in personalities is not always a bad thing, if both sides are willing to make sacrifices. Ten years later, we are making those sacrifices willingly, because we understand the magnitude of what we have.

1 comment:

  1. Well, okay, but, for my money, grafs 3 and 4 both work to undermine your point. Maybe because I'm the same way as Lois but you describe her mornings in a way that makes me think of her as organized in that regard. Similarly, getting there early to me is the sign of organization; getting there just in time...is late, not organized!

    So, I take the essay without quite agreeing with it.

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