SKIP THE HEM — THE CALCULUS OF DYBA TIME

One of the first things I noticed about my friend Jason was how he cuffed his jeans. They didn’t look bad, I’d just never seen it done the way he did it. He would roll them just once, and the cuff would be about 4 inches tall. It would creep up past his ankle into his lower shin, leaving a slightly lighter layer of denim exposed for the last bit of his leg, like a pair of indigo chimneys stacked above his sneakers.

I can’t remember if it was because he just told me or if I had finally lost enough sleep over it to bother asking, but he finally let me in on what made him do that. He said the place he bought his jeans (Old Navy, I think) didn’t sell that style in dual sizes. That means you can only buy a 30x30, or a 32x32, instead of a 30x32 or a 32x30. So Jason (being, I bet, a 30x28) would simply buy his waist size and didn’t think it was worth the time to take them to the tailor to be hemmed. He just cuffed them high. Easy.

And then, of course, there were the sneakers. I learned at some point that Jason only owns one functional pair of sneakers at a time, given to him by his wife every year for Christmas. They’re usually Saucony’s, something white, grey, or neutral—a “go with anything” type of shoe. He said it’s not worth the time it takes to shop for sneakers when the ones his wife buys him are perfectly fine.

Jason also doesn’t read menus, at least not in their entirety. When we go eat, he sits down, opens the menu, and as soon as his eyes land on something appetizing, he closes it and orders that. No deliberation. No worry for what else he may be missing.

What’s wild is when it comes time for Jason to upgrade his car every decade or so, his approach isn’t much different. Legend has it he goes to the dealer with a dollar amount and a specific set of features he’s looking for. And as long as what they wheel out isn’t a total piece of garbage, Jason will take it home. That’s how he wound up with his current car, a Volkswagen Jetta—which, let’s be honest, is the Saucony sneaker of cars.

This man hasn’t rewatched any movies. He doesn’t reread books. He doesn’t re-listen to podcasts, and if you ask him whether or not he’s listened to the latest album from whoever, I would put a lot of money on a bet that he says “no.”

It’s clear to me that Jason is a miser with his seconds. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not unkempt, he’s just constantly forgoing so many of those things the rest of us seem consumed with. Jason has nothing to learn from Jesus’ phrase, “Do not be concerned with what you will wear or what you will eat.” And over the course of our friendship, I’ve seen Jason building a bank of time savings—second by second, like pennies in a time bank.

So, you may be wondering to yourself, as I was…

“What does Jason do with all of this collected time?”

Several months after I moved to Atlanta as a broke 21-year-old, my car was stolen overnight. I had forgotten to lock it when I went to bed, and I was devastated. But, praise the Lord, it was recovered about a week later. The police told me it was waiting for me at a tow yard across town, so I asked Jason if he would drive me there on a lunch break because I was working for him at a small Baptist church and he wasn’t paying me enough to afford an Uber.

So we drove in Jason’s truck (pre-Jetta) to the tow yard on a Thursday in the middle of Atlanta lunch traffic. It was a grueling trek that extended past lunch, and upon arrival, the nice folks at the tow yard told me I needed to have my vehicle cleared by going to the police precinct and getting a release slip from them. So Jason and I jumped back into his truck and crossed town again to the precinct in a completely different corner of Atlanta. Once we received that, we traversed to the tow yard again, and what had once been lunch-hour traffic was now rush-hour traffic. Then, only after I had paid those nice folks a little over half of my net worth to get my car out of their tow yard, I was able to thank Jason for being so generous with his time and split off on our separate ways.

What struck me most was Jason didn’t really seem to mind. We spent the drive talking about screenwriters we loved, scenes in movies we thought were incredible, who we listened to or read for the news, how he met his wife—but never did he mention how much of his time I was eating up with my petty, youthful conundrum.

And I thought about that trip for a while in confusion. This was a very busy man who accomplished more in a day than most of us are lucky to finish in a month. I almost never got to the office before him or left after him. He had a wife, kids, and a pretty active social life. I found myself stumped by how he could spare to waste several hours helping me get out of a mess that my carelessness had caused. How could he be so generous with his time, and not seem all that upset about it?

But then I learned that he bought his jeans at a place where you can’t buy a different length than waist, and he didn’t waste time getting them hemmed—he just cuffed them. And he doesn’t go shoe shopping—he just wears what his wife buys him for Christmas. He doesn’t read menus. He doesn’t labor over buying a car. He doesn’t rewatch movies, reread books, re-listen to podcasts, or run the hamster wheel of trendy muzak.

Jason, I learned, is incredibly stingy with his seconds so he can be remarkably generous with his hours.

And it wasn’t just that once in the throes of Atlanta traffic. It happens all the time. He almost always says yes to an invitation to catch up over coffee. He always reviews my work if I ask him to. He has since driven me to procure two other vehicles beyond the edges of Atlanta. And he does the same sorts of things for all of the people he loves in his life.

So now, every time he walks in wearing those unhemmed, high-cuffed jeans, I’m reminded: Some things are worth caring about, and some things aren’t. Jason’s taught me to spend my seconds wisely—so I can be rich in hours where it counts most.