Telling Time Has Changed

We still have some wall clocks but not many, and not all are kept in working order.  Those in the garage and barn tend to stop or go awry and not much attention is paid…because we both carry a cell phone almost all the time.

When I want to know the time, I whip the phone out of my back pocket and look.  I can also set an alarm, a timer, or a reminder with the phone – the Swiss army knife of timekeeping. 

It made me remember one of my most significant birthday gifts, because I felt in some ways it marked me as a soon-to-be-adult.  I think I was 13 or 14 when I got my first Timex wrist watch.  I was absolutely thrilled.  Dad had to take about half the links out of the elastic wrist band to keep it on my bony little arm, but I found it beautiful.  I really didn’t have that much to keep track of in those days…maybe watch the hands crawl slowly across the face as I struggled to stay awake on a late babysitting job.  But it made me feel more important.

Like most kids of my era, we did some wandering around the neighborhood and we usually remembered about what time we should think about heading home to avoid getting chastised, not for missing anything but for worrying my mom if the absence was abnormally long.  If we lingered at a neighbor’s, mom would pick up the party line and tell the neighbor mom to send us home.

Now there are little clocks in the corners of our screens, in our cars, and on our appliances.  These have gotten more dependable, because I remember perpetually frozen clocks in both my grandfather’s big boat cars.  Ditto many a stove clock in the old days.  I have never been able to figure out how to reset the clock in my older car when the time changes occur, and this becomes another “honey-do” on Mike’s running list.  If it takes a while for me to remind him, I just revert to using the phone since I can never remember if I need to add the hour or deduct it.  I was born without the necessary brain cells to do so.

I use my phone to play two little games.  One is to guess during the afternoon how many steps I have taken so far in the day, and I normally come within 200 of the right total.  I also like to guess what time it is just before I consult my phone and again, I usually come very, very close.  Even in the middle of the night I am pretty accurate. 

There are some primitive parts of our brain devoted to the tracking of time.  All of our animals anticipate wake up times; feeding times, and walking times very accurately.  We are creatures of habit, yes, but even when I’m sure we aren’t cuing them, they begin agitating shortly before we usually do these things.  The one exception is bed time.  Wolfgang always tries to encourage me to retire around 6 p.m., as that is when he likes to go to bed, and if I am still up, he gets “FOMO” (Fear Of Missing Out) and just can’t settle in his bed.  It’s quite entertaining to watch him fight sleep but if I stay up late, he tries valiantly too.

I have a beautiful gold watch I was gifted.  I love the classic style very much.  But I never wear it.  It would be simply to enjoy it as a piece of jewelry, and I seldom dress up.

I can imagine putting it on, and my granddaughter being surprised that the only thing it does is tell time, unlike the wristband computers so many wear now.

I don’t know what happened to my little silver Timex but I sort of wish I still had it.  It is a memory of a gift of major significance.  It did nothing except tell time, that was all, and I seem to remember I had to hand wind it although maybe that’s wrong.

I WAS WRONG!

I got a wonderful e-mail from “Sabin” in Silver Cliff telling me in the kindest possible way that I was wrong when I said I found it hard to believe a tiny short-tailed weasel could kill a chicken.  About two years ago he removed a strange furry snake like thing from around the neck of one of his chickens.  It was indeed a short-tailed weasel and it would have most assuredly succeeded in killing the much larger bird had Sabin not rescued the chicken.  One of the joys of this column is hearing periodically from people like him.  I first got a communication from him via my dad in July of 2012, long before I ever thought of writing the column myself.  I asked my Dad if he’d run a column for me that I had written, seeking information about the primitive grave marker I had found on my parent’s property when I was little.  Sabin had seen a similar example, and sent a most educational and compassionate explanation of what I’d found; I was so impressed I kept a copy of it.  Thank you again Sabin, and I stand corrected – and I am even more in awe of these tiny predators.

You can reach me for commentary, alternative viewpoints or ideas at this e-mail address:  JanieTMartin@gmail.com