No Time...

I’ve learned to live in a timeless world.

I removed the clock from my taskbar. I did that not long after I started working here. I did that because I was sitting there looking at the time all day. Not good.

I didn’t know you could do that – remove it from the task bar I mean. I knew you could stare at it. But a guy I work with, let’s call him Lawrence, though I’m not sure why we have to call him anything given that his role here is done, I sat with him at his desk and noticed that his PC screen didn’t show the time. That’s what gave me the idea – that plus the fact that I was staring at it all day.

My watch strap broke, that’s another thing. I took it to the kiosk where I always get watch batteries. I can’t fix that! He said. That’s a Timex! It has a special strap! I don’t sell those! I thought about buying some exclamation points. So I tried a different kiosk, at a different shopping plaza. I can’t fix that! He said. And on we went. So I popped into Zeller’s and picked up a Timex strap. Here I said. Put this on. Wrong kind! He said. Sure it’s Timex! He said. But it’s not the right kind!

So I’ve stopping looking at the time. That’s not to say that I never know what time it is. I’ve got an alarm clock that rings in the morning – well it doesn’t “ring” exactly, it’s a clock radio – and it’s set to one time for Sunday and another for Monday – Friday. No alarm on Saturday, except this discarded strapless digital watch that sits on my night table and beeps every morning just after 6:30. It’s losing time, that one, slowly, and eventually it’ll be 7:00 for sure. But I hear it (beep beep beep) unless the fan is on, because the fan is louder than the beep, though usually I’m up already. Yes I’m up at 6:30 Saturday morning.

Beyond that I have reminders that Outlook pops up all day long.
· 8:00 AM – start working
· 8:30 AM – you’ve been sitting at your desk for 30 minutes; time to really start working [sic]
· 9:30 AM – get coffee
· 10:00 AM – Have some water
· 12:00 PM – Have more water
· 12:30 PM – have lunch
· 1:30 PM – Lunch is over
· 2:00 PM – Aren’t you thirsty again?
· 3:30 PM – go grab some fruit from the kitchen
· 4:00 PM – it’s 4:00 PM
· 4:55 PM – Think about leaving
· 5:00 PM – bye

And places that I’m in have clocks, and if I look at them well then I look at them, that’s not my fault, I didn’t put them up there. And sometimes I have to be somewhere at a specific time, and I can’t be late so I have to figure out what time it is, and sometimes the bus only comes once every 40 minutes or so so I have to know whether to wait or find another bus or walk, and if I arrange to meet someone at 7 then I need to know when it’s 7, I even need to know when it’s before 7 so I don’t make him wait, and if I put something in the oven then I must keep track of the time to know when it’s ready, and if I want to get enough sleep then I have to set a time to go to bed, and I have to know when that time comes around...

Man I’m obsessed with the time...

The People On The Bus

The people on the bus go up and down. So goes the song we sang to our kids. I never understood it. It’s the people on the elevator that go up and down. People on the bus, they just sit there. Some read, many listen to music, or something, I assume it’s music, I can’t prove it. A healthy minority of passengers yap on their cell phones. But most just sit there. They don’t even open the window.

I take what I call a commuter bus. That’s a bus that runs to an outlying area, has limited service, and on which one sees the same passengers every day.

And what a bunch of interesting people. There’s Lenin. I call him that because he’s a dead ringer for the guy that led the Russian Revolution. Same beard, same eyes. He wears small round metal glasses, reminiscent more of Beatle John, so perhaps I should call him Lennon. From his dress I’d guess that he’s a blue collar worker. The problem, though, is that I haven’t seen Lenin in months. So I worry about old Lenin. I hope he’s ok. Maybe he’s in Zurich.

Now Betty Bigbum, she’s interesting. Blonde, totally a bimbo, not quite up on how best to dress to flatter her rather idiosyncratic figure. Usually she’ll sit and stare straight ahead, but occasionally she will be engrossed in a phone conversation throughout the entire 30 minute ride, and it’s an even bet whether she’ll be talking in English or French, for bimbo though she may be, she sounds equally adept at either language. Perhaps I should call her Bilingual Betty Bigbum.

Bilingual Betty Bigbum the Bimbo.

Then there’s Pineapple Head. Now PH, she’s a young dark–haired woman, maybe early 20s, with an air of jaunty self-confidence like I’ve rarely seen. It takes a certain self-assurance to wear your hair in a pony tail coming straight out of the top of your head, every single day. Somehow, PH seemed to get away with it. Then I didn’t see her for a while, mostly because I changed my schedule. But after a bit, there she was, on the home ride this time, and hey, guess what. No more pony tail. And that’s ok, only I had to take a second look to be sure it was her. Not that I stare or anything. Honest, I’ve developed people watching techniques that’d be the envy of the best PI.

But stare or not, there was good old Pineapple Head sitting next to me the other day, on the same bench with an empty seat between us. And Pineapple Head was in meal mode. She had some kind of take-out, and was eating with relish. Not relish, but relish. You know what I mean. Relish. So me, being the impetuous type, I pulled out a bottle of water from which I had not drank, tapped old Pineapple Head on the shoulder, and offered her the water. She’ll be thirsty, I reasoned. OH no! She said, smiling, I have, she said, in a heavy French accent (“I ‘ave”), pointing to her big white purse. And sure enough, a minute or two later, she pulled out a water bottle identical to the one I’d offered and I looked at her and I said Perfect! And she responded Ya!

And so I ride the bus, and continue to interact with the world in all manner of odd ways, and I may continue to report my adventures, if I don’t get arrested…