It Takes a Worried Man to Get There on Time

My wife says I worry too much.

If I do, it’s because I understand the problems. I suspect that most things turn out badly.

It’s true, as she says, that I worry that we are going to be late for the theater, or a dinner party, or any event, yet we never are. The reason we are never late, of course, is that I worry about it.

The other afternoon, for example, she drove us, in her car, to Loma Linda, out near Redlands. We were supposed to be there for dinner at 6 o’clock. We didn’t get started until 4:25 and then she had to stop for gas. Knowing how heavy traffic would be on the San Bernardino Freeway, I kept saying, “We aren’t going to make it.”

We made it exactly to the minute. But the reason we made it was that I kept telling her we weren’t going to make it, and once we had passed through the Pomona traffic she hit the throttle and we went 75 m.p.h. all the way. I probably shouldn’t expose her for driving that fast, but I’m trying to show that worrying gets things done.

She says that when we travel I carry a bag full of “worst-case scenarios.” There is some truth in that. As a sophisticated man of the world I am aware that danger lurks down every street. When we were in Madrid, I worried that she was going to have her purse snatched on the sidewalk. It didn’t happen, but I was vindicated. We had dinner in Madrid with two friends from New York, and they told us later that after we parted the wife’s purse was snatched on Madrid’s main boulevard. She lost not only all her money and jewelry, but also her passport.

Often, when we go to the Music Center, we eat at Rothschild’s, taking a chance on finding seats at the bar, without reservations. Sometimes it has looked hopeless, but we have always found seats. Then I worry that we are going to be late for the curtain. I check my watch constantly, a nervous habit that she says detracts from her enjoyment of her dinner. I can only point out that we have never missed a curtain, and I give credit for that to my worrying.

I don’t worry about events that are beyond my control. I think the savings and loan disaster is the worst scandal in American history--much worse than Watergate and Iran-Contra--but there’s nothing I can do about it so I don’t worry about it. It’s only going to cost about $500 billion anyway, and our progeny can pay it.

I never worried about the Cold War or the nuclear holocaust. It was beyond my control. As it turned out, the very people who should have been worried didn’t understand the situation. Not one of our politicians or pundits foresaw the collapse of the Berlin Wall or the end of the Cold War.

When my wife decided that we should remodel our house I worried that it would exhaust our financial resources, that it would strain our marriage, and that, finally, it would give us twice the space we needed to live in comfort.

The work has been going on now since June, and I must say that, so far, our architect and our contractor have been efficient, solicitous and pleasant to work with. They are doing an excellent job, but of course our finances will be exhausted, our marriage will be strained, and we will have twice as much room as we need.

It may be, however, that in doubling our space, we will reduce the strain on our marriage. And in increasing the value of our house, we may ultimately reduce the strain on our finances. It’s possible that all my worries will have been in vain.

However, I think that one partner in every marriage ought to be a worrier. My worrying may be exactly why our marriage has survived 51 years. My wife is an incorrigible optimist. She really believes that nothing bad will ever happen to her. So far it hasn’t, unless you count her marrying me.

Also, there was the time in London when a thief plucked her billfold out of her open purse in the underground. He ran before I could tackle him, which I doubt that I would have tried to do anyway. The point is, I had warned her to be careful in the underground. It was an object lesson.

That incident spoiled her day, but it did not spoil the rest of our vacation and it has not spoiled her attitude toward life. She still feels invulnerable. Her glass is half full; mine is half empty.

My most persistent worry today is that our lifestyle has degenerated. We eat almost nothing but microwave dinners and we spend our evenings watching sex and violence on television.

Maybe, when the remodeling is finished, we will go back to reading and home-cooked dinners. But I worry that we won’t.