In the 1980’s, our family developed an advanced theory of time. I’m not talking about relativity or any other temporal pursuits. When raising our kids, we set our clocks ahead by five minutes. This was before smartphones and smartwatches. I’m talking about the clock on the wall in the kitchen. The idea was that a glance could galvanize us into action. This kept kids from missing the school bus and us from being late for… well, everything.
Did it work? Of course not, because eventually, everyone knew the clocks were fast. Once, I tried bumping the time by eight minutes, but the kids were older and probably had a clock based on reality secreted away in their rooms.
The problem was that there were events that needed precision. If someone asked what time it was, the designation went like this: “What time is it real people’s time?” My weak attempts at foolery fooled no one.
Now, we run our clocks as accurately as possible. We have a 130-year-old clock in the living room that does pretty well, but when I wind the eight-day mechanism on Saturday evening, I use my iPhone to figure out if it needs a bump. It is Saturday evening, and it just struck 8 o’clock, and it was about 7:59 and thirty seconds—very close to real people’s time.
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