Open Writing

A mud-spattered bit of philosophy dangled from the bumper of a battered truck I followed down the freeway: The trouble is we think we have time. So, we think we have time, I grumbled. What’s the problem? So another year kicks off. Simply grab it and run.

Time marches on, time is money, long time no see, hard time, big time, free time, doing time. The time is out of joint? There’s that Hamlet, whining again. No time to say hello, goodbye? Get a life, white bunny. Enjoy. As Marilyn Monroe coyly confessed, “I've been on a calendar but I have never been on time.”

We do have our problems, but they’re not about time: finding air fresh enough to take our breath away might be a problem; cutting down trees like they were daffodils might be a problem; gathering enough honey bees to sweeten our tea; dragging the kids outside and making them play. Even those recycling bins we perch on our curbs like colorful birds on a wire might become more of a problem than time. Once they start to leak, crumble and crack where will we put them?

Maybe the trouble is that we fiddle with time like teenagers playing with their hair. We don’t know what to do with time when we have it. Consider, for instance, in one second a cheetah can dash 34 yards; a telephone signal can travel 100,000 miles; a hummingbird can beat its wings 70 times; 8 million blood cells can die. Between the aim and the fire, the I and the do, the to and the fro, the pitch and the hit, a plane can crash, a bomb can drop, a heart can start, and the tide stands still … you can set your watch by it.

Not long ago it seemed as though half the wrists in the land were ticking — the volume going up every June as graduating seniors wound their rewards. I can remember when substantial men put time on a chain and pulled it out of special pockets at the slightest provocation. And it was not that long ago, when you consider how long time has been around, we could find time simply by looking up at the tallest steeple in town, even when it was not ready to chime.

In the early years of our country Benjamin Franklin had big plans for time; his fiddling around with almanacs and kites was only a diversion. What possessed him was the same passion homemakers display when they relocate the couch and move the coffee table a titch to the left. Franklin was the first American to propose (at least out loud) that we take our time and shove it wherever we want it to go.

No one took him seriously because in those days we did not have a “standard time” to deviate from (nor were we permitted to end our sentences with prepositions.) Each town set its own time; city fathers simply found time in the sky by looking up at the sun.

Not until the trains came did we synchronize our clocks; the railroads could not have every steeple along the track tolling to a slightly different drummer. In 1883, 93 years too late for Ben to say I told you so, the United States and Canada formally agreed on a standard time schedule: Standard Railroad Time it was called.

Nevertheless, we kept fiddling around — sometimes for good reason. During portions of both world wars we moved our clocks ahead to save energy. President Roosevelt called this War Time. Next, for some reason, our states took over the game; apparently they thought they had the time. At any rate, it is said that there were once 23 different starting and ending dates in the state of Iowa alone, and on a 35-mile stretch of highway between Moundsville, West Virginia and Steubenville, Ohio, passengers had to change their watches seven times.

Meanwhile, science began to imply that time (like the old gray mare) ain’t what it used to be … and actually, never was. It is getting so that we can’t shove time around without taking space with it. Einstein and his ilk teach that sometimes, in some places, space curves and when space curves, time curves, and when time curves clocks in motion slow down. What’s more, clocks at a higher elevation run faster than clocks on the surface of the earth.

A least I have an explanation why one of my punctual friends showed up one afternoon flushed and distressed, almost an hour late for a movie we were going to. “I don’t know what happened,” she panted, “I must have been looking at the wrong clock.” I didn’t pursue it; half a movie is better than none. And I have learned (one of the advantages of being a mother) if you’re not sure you will approve of the answer, don’t ask the question.

In one sense, all clocks are correct; they just might not be in the right place at the right time. As Charles Schultz, creator of Peanuts, says, “Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.”