Who’s spending your time and money?

Time is money, right? So, what is yours worth?

Attorneys often bill by the hour, their fee determined by such factors as their education and training, their expertise in dealing with a particular point of law and the length of time the case or issue may require. And, yes, what the market will bear (to include what the client can afford, or will tolerate).

Not just lawyers: plumbers often are by-the-hour billers, as are electricians and other skilled tradesmen; public relations counselors and some clinicians, such as psychologists and social workers. Freelance journalists are sometimes compensated by the hour as opposed to the page or by word count.

“Time is the coin of your life,” intoned Carl Sandburg. “It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

I was not sufficiently careful the other day, so some other people spent my coin, some of it, for me. Mid-afternoon it was, the classroom day at its end and the streets surrounding schools filled with cars driven by parents or pupils. En route to pick up a prescription for a relative, a lane change was in order, a simple enough outside-to-inside shift. No big deal — even when a left front bumper made contact with a right front passenger side door. No injuries, no major damage. Scrapes, a dent; with luck one of those on-site, outpatient auto repair shops could restore both vehicles to showroom condition. Or close enough. Two drivers who remained calm and civil and, despite a slight difference in their eventual interpretations of the accident, apologetic.

Assured by our respective insurance agents (cell phones, they can be pretty handy devices, correct?) that, yes, we should indeed summon a police officer for an accident report no matter how slight the damage (“You’d be amazed how often people change their stories,” one underwriter cautioned), we two drivers tossed an invisible coin and one of us dialed up the cop shop. No, no one was injured, no need for an ambulance. In that case, said the dispatcher, almost gleefully, it might be a while before an officer could respond.

Well, it was a nice February day, unseasonably warm, azure skies and scattered gobs of off-white cumulus, and just enough breeze to move what few oak leaves remained on the limbs nearby; so why not just lean against the cars while we wait for the patrolman who might be a while responding, and chat about the weather, or the price of eggs, or how long should you really go before an oil change or what a good cook can do with elbow macaroni? Stuff like that.

Stuff like that is fine for the first half-hour. Then a second half-hour, which makes an hour; and the two drivers have grown weary of making nice and, while still being nice, are calculating what their time is worth. It is worth more than they are earning by talking weather and food. These are minutes, half-hours, that they will not get back. You can get more money, someone once observed, but you cannot get more time. Frustrated but not saying so aloud, persuaded that checking their watches will not speed the cop’s arrival, they turn to their smartphones and start reading about — whatever.

Up pops a news feed, a summary of what has busied the General Assembly of Arkansas, meeting in its own time on your money. By the volume of coverage it would appear that only one issue consumed the lawmakers this day, in these hours, as a clear majority prepared to regulate yet another clinical procedure. Practicing medicine has become customary at the Capitol in recent years; obstetrics, in particular, but in this session as in the previous, endocrinology and psychiatry and pediatrics as well. And surgery, of a certain sort, even if not known to have been performed in Arkansas (or anywhere else) on the demographic (minors) the sponsors of the bill insist they are determined to protect. That resolve required one member to inquire about the presence, or absence, of a witness’s member.

A month into the session, it’s to such medical matters that the legislators already have devoted a lot of time, theirs and the staff’s, and money, ours. Well, one supposes doctors bill as often by the hour as by the procedure.

I got a ticket and I’ll have to pay a fine. The time and money will be mine, not yours, which other people are spending.