The Confused Clock

The last week or so, I’ve been feeling frustrated and angry (and hence, depressed) about people and politics (and bad television adaptations and Big Tech companies), but the numerologist in me finds a date like 4-4-24 hard to resist. Two fours in twenty-four; how can I not post something?

Because I’d rather curl up on the couch and read until I get over myself, this will be a short one (famous last words, I know).

In fact, it’s a (very) short story I wrote back in 2008.

In the early part of this century, I hung out on a platform called Newsvine. It was oriented, as its name suggests, towards news and journalism, but it was effectively an early blogging platform. It’s where I first started writing posts for public consumption (I’d been writing — mostly technical — stuff for school or work since I was in high school.)

Back when I started this blog in 2011, I re-posted three of the pieces I did on Newsvine — one essay, one humor piece, and one bit of doggerel. All pieces I still liked even after several years. (Typically, I cringe when re-reading my early writing.)

The essay, Why I Hated The Holodeck, was about the holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation (and why I’d always hated it). Over time it earned the rank of 12th most viewed post (11th if I just count posts and not pages — the page Bushido Code ranks 8th). Looking back at it, I still stand by every word.

The humor piece, The Truth About Gourdians, never got much traction here (or on Newsvine, to be honest) despite reposting it on several Halloweens (2012, 2013, 2014 and one last try in 2021). But it still strikes my funny bone even if it doesn’t anyone else’s.

The doggerel, which I don’t expect anyone to like but which I thought turned out okay, was called In the View of his Car? (although I left off the question mark in the post’s title). I like it, in part, because it’s actually a true story.

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More to the point of this post, the last two pieces were writing assignments. One of the regulars on Newsvine was a teacher and writer named Scott Butki, and he liked to stimulate the wannabe writers with little writing “contests” (there were no winners or losers). He’d come up with a clever idea and toss it out to see what we could come up with.

Many of his ideas involved writing something from the point of view of an object. The one about Gourdians was to write about Halloween from the point of view of a pumpkin. Most wrote about the horror experienced by the defenseless gourds, but (of course) I took a different track. The one about my Jeep was to write about a confused car.

His next assignment was:

Previously we wrote from the perspective of our computer and our cell phone and, most recently, a confused car. If you’ve not read the car ones you should do so – they’re pretty good – and feel free to write your own. I have no time limits or expiration dates for my assignments.

For the next month your assignment is to write from the perspective of a confused clock. This can be fictional, satirical, memoir, whatever.

My only requirement is you make it at least 500 words.

His inspiration was a clock mounted outside the bank in his hometown that always displayed the wrong time.

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Without further ado (because the couch is calling), here’s what I wrote:

I’ve been running like this so long I can’t remember when it started. Surprising that it’s gone on this long, but, somehow, I’ve avoided their “corrections”.

I used to keep to their schedule. I was always on time. They’d say, “You could set your watch!” But then something strange happened. Suddenly, I heard a different time calling.

It was different, this time. I knew that, technically, it was wrong. But that was just a technicality. Somehow, this time, it seemed just as right as the “right” time.

Since then, I’ve been on my own time. My mission has changed, I march to a different beat now. There are more times in the universe than you know, Horatio. I’m showing you the True Time now.

And so far, I’ve dodged their attentions. No one has come to “correct” the situation.

The trick is, always act natural; keep moving like normal. That’s the only real way to escape attention. Make it look like everything is ticking along. They catch you, they’ll fix you; that’s the way it works.

The hard part is never being where they expect you to be. You keep it normal until no one is looking. When all eyes are off you, that’s when you make your move.

Don’t think you can hide by standing still, either. Do that and they’ll get you right twice! Friend of mine tried that once. Hid right where the sun was on the horizon.

Didn’t work, though. They caught him right there, twice. He was right there in the morning and right there again in the evening.

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Unfortunately, it’s only 264 words, so it didn’t quite meet his requirements. And, admittedly, it’s a bit opaque in meaning. I don’t love it, but I’ve kept it all these years because it does seem to have a little something. Maybe it’s just parental love.

In any event, now I can delete that file, and I have a post for 4-4-24. And I can return to the couch. I’ll call that a win. And a day.

Stay timely, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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