My father sometimes wrote columns about my mother and with only a few exceptions she enjoyed them. I can remember her laughing her head off as she read. Sometimes she would laugh so hard that he would ask her (in an irritated voice!) to please leave the room because she was making too much noise for him to hear the TV! Here is one from June 30, 1959.
I always thought a clock was for keeping time, nothing more. But my wife has quite a different view. In her scheme of things, the clock is cast in the role of co-conspirator to help her beat the fates.
She thinks that if the clock is set a little fast, it will give her a cushion of time from which to operate; that, paradoxically, everything will be on time if the clock isn’t. You follow me?
As far as I can figure out, she doesn’t really want to know how many minutes fast the clock is. This adds zest to the game, I guess. Personally, I cannot follow that line of reasoning. I try to operate as if the clock were accurate. I must confess, however, to feeling a little glow of pleasure in learning that I have rushed through all necessary preparations for going to the office and wind up with a few spare minutes. But too often, the opposite is true. Such is life on Holt’s unstandardized time.
I feel Shakespeare understood my wife’s peculiarity in this regard when he had Macbeth speak of, “here upon this bank and shoal of time.”
That is it precisely. My wife likes to think that she has a bank of time to draw on. And only too late do we occasionally find that her account is overdrawn. And community property being what it is, I’m generally penalized too. The shoal on which we founder is the prospect of members of the family being late to school or office.
The lateness syndrome is not difficult to recognize. Symptoms include shortness of time, of temper and of breath, the latter exhibited while mumbling excuses to the boss.
I should explain that at our house we are solely dependent for time information on two electric clocks. At various times, members of the family have purchased watches, but one after another they gave up the ticking and fell silent. Of course, I could turn on the radio for the time, but somehow, I have the conviction that our radio is slow.
Something in our residence evidently is anti-time keeping. Even the sand in our hour glass egg timer tends to cake up, I notice. In all this, it is a tribute to the reliability of the electric clocks that they keep sturdily on recording the time of day (or as close to it as my wife will permit) despite all distractions. But even they can fall prey. For one thing the power may go off. Or the cat may pull the cord with his paw.
More commonly, perhaps, my youngest daughter Betsey may have dialed the telephone number that gives you the time, and, in her enthusiasm, set the hands accurately. This causes near pandemonium. I notice she carries on animated conversations with the “time” voice. I always thought this was a recording, until I heard a cough the other day. Do recordings cough?
