Time On My Mind

[Writers Plot]

posted by Jeanne

I can't speak for the rest of the country, but many of us on the East Coast have been shuffling around for the past week as if in a trance. We're Red Sox Nation and we've been through division championships, league championships and finally the World Series.

Of course we're glad that The Olde Home Team won the big trophy. Personally, and I note here that I've been a Sox fan for ...let's just say decades and leave it at that, I was suprised that the Series only went four games. The Colorado Rockies (and I'm not just writing this to appease all our Denver-area friends and relatives) are a great young team and I figured that, at the least, the altitude would work for them for a game or two.

In case you haven't been to Colorado, let me point out that there is no oxygen in Denver. Arriving at the airport, travelers, rather like Sleeping Beauty, fall asleep at the luggage carousel and awaken two days later in a rental car heading for Estes Park or Vail. Okay, I'm exaggerating as well as digressing.

As everybody knows, the Sox swept. This was a very good thing for us Easterners, because we have been struggling to stay awake for several weeks now, to watch games on television that start when we're usually yawning and end when we're usually in deep REM sleep. Frankly, we're all tired and a bit cranky. (In my case, more than "a bit" at some junctures). And our team won.

Actually, we're just getting a head start on the semi-annual national event called "Daylight Saving Time." The goal of DST is admirable: do more stuff in natural daylight, saving on power costs etc. The result in human terms, however, is rather different. It takes days and sometimes weeks for our biological clocks to adjust to the change. When we wake up on that fateful Monday morning in April, we groan and say, "It's really only six am, so no wonder I'm so tired." And when we're sinking fast at a boring party on the fateful Sunday evening in November, we say, "No wonder I'm tired! It's really ten pm."

Don't let anybody tell you that the hours given and taken result in an even swap. They don't, because we spend at least an hour twice a year changing our various clocks and other timepieces. Part of the time will be wasted looking for manuals that explain how to change the time on our clock-radios, microwaves, mantle clocks, grandfather clocks, and so forth.

Cell phones and computers seem to make the switch automatically, which is a good thing, because that allows us the extra time we need to change our digital watches. For several years I wore sports watches with stop-timers, lap-timers, lap-counters, and all the rest--handy for counting laps at the pool, because I always lose track and God forbid I should swim an extra lap or two before hitting the hot tub. But I never could change the time, an arcane process that involved holding down various buttons at the same time, punching other buttons, and on and on. I toyed with the idea of having one watch for standard time and one for DST, but that was silly, and besides, vacation trips usually include at least a couple of time changes.

I caved. I bought a watch with a stem and actual hands. The second hand would time laps if I were so inclined, and I just have to count the pool laps myself and hope for the best. The alternative was to ask some young whippersnapper (my younger daughter, for example, who does not think I can be trusted with an electronic device as complicated as a remote control) to change the digital watch for me, but that was just too humiliating.

I am often reminded of vacations in Colorado with my in-laws, including the brother-in-law from the West Coast. Whenever I asked him what time it was, he would proudly tell me the exact time in "that there California." I have no idea why he didn't adjust his watch to Mountain time, because he always wore the old-fashioned, easy-to-reset style. Now I have to admit he was onto something.

With whiz-bang digital watches, I am now prepared, no matter where I'm vacationing, to announce what time it is in "that there Boston."