Married to a Fast Woman

My wife says she lives like she types—fast and with a lot of mistakes. I can’t comment on the mistakes part, but I can attest to the fast part. I literally cannot keep up with her.

When I tell people I’m behind my wife 100% of the time, I mean that literally. My wife, like Time, waits for no man.

As I start to do some household chore like putting a new trash bag in the trash can, she says, “I’ll do that” because she can’t stomach how slowly (in her view) I would do the task. She hasn’t got all second.

She’s incredibly fast getting into the car. It’s only a few steps from our back door to her car. We leave together and I lock the house door. By the time I’m seated in the passenger seat a few seconds later, she gives off a vibe like “Where’ve you been? Did you get lost?”

We used to both be English teachers. I would get up at 5:00 a.m. to grade a class’s essays and would finish late that night. She’d grade the same number of papers with equally many markings and equally long comments in a fast and furious afternoon. Watching her grade was like watching the Tasmanian devil in the Looney Tunes cartoons. Getting too close to her or trying to interrupt was flat-out dangerous.

I think her speed is most noticeable in airports, where her determination translates into acceleration, especially when she’s changing planes. She thinks of the middle aisle in an airport as a runway, and when she gets to it, she takes off. The only way I can begin to keep up with her fast-paced walking is to jog. And in case you think this is just my perception, several of her friends who’ve traveled with her also all lagged behind her and have complained, “You walk really fast.” When her son was four, he asked her, “Mommy, why are we always in a hurry?”

She has a fast sister, too—an identical twin. When they’re together, they do everything double time.

There are some nice perks being married to a fast woman. Carolyn is the fastest good cook in the multiverse. She makes delicious meals from scratch in only 10 or 15 minutes. Leftovers are ready in 5. And she cleans as she goes while she’s cooking. She somehow sets the table during that time, too. She’s so fast she surprises herself. She’s always apologizing that she’s gotten supper ready 5 or 10 minutes ahead of schedule again. She cooks a 3-minute egg in 2 minutes, a minute steak in 30 seconds.

Maybe you think I’m exaggerating. But Carolyn lives so fast she watches informational and instructional YouTube videos sped up to 1.5 or even 2.0 speed. Seriously. (She clicks on “settings” on her laptop and chooses the higher-than-normal speed.) Even though it sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks to me, she says she can still understand what’s being said and this way she doesn’t get impatient or waste time.

She’s not only fast; she’s quick.

And, incredibly, even when she’s not awake, she’s fast—asleep.

She speeds when she drives, too, of course, which is why she almost never lets me behind the wheel when we take a car trip together. I’m pretty sure her car rifling down the highway creates a shockwave. She gets places SO much faster than I do that I don’t think it can be explained just by her increased speed either. I believe she works a little hoodoo on the space-time continuum. She drives at what I’d call warped speed.

Once she owned a Renault with a broken speedometer, but she didn’t bother to get it fixed since she paid so little attention to speed limits anyway. If she’d ever been pulled over (which she wasn’t), she would’ve honestly been able to say, “No, officer, as a matter of fact I don’t know how fast I was going.”

My wife didn’t need a speedometer then, and she doesn’t need one now because she goes by what feels right. And what feels right—as you surely know by now—is FAST!

(Bill Spencer is author of Uranus Is Always Funny: Short Essays to Make You Laugh.)