Lost in Time

I know, you are eagerly wondering whether this post is about the hit song by Stellastarr* or a recap of last night's Lost episode. While both are tops on my list (and who can resist the repetitive dream sequence/ time traveling of Horace Goodspeed?) this post is actually about my watch. And how it failed me. Two days ago.

"You don't know what you got until it's go-oone..." Someone sang that once and let me tell you how true it is. I never knew, until my watch battery puttered to a slow painful death, how much I relied on my watch. Clearly we live in a society that follows the clock. We work 9-5 (well, I work 9-5 at least...), we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner generally within the same 2 hour time spans, we wake up at the same time, go to bed at the same time - we are creatures of habit. And even though I'm certain we could rely on our "inner timepieces" to get through the day, we have meetings and appointments and other activities that rely on precise time knowledge.

To have a broken watch is bad. To have a dying watch is worse. A dying watch is one whose step is becoming a little shaky, whose breaths are becoming labored. A dying watch is one who can't quite keep up the pace. For two days I woke up (at 7am) to my watch displaying 11:45. For two days, it couldn't quite make it to the end of the day and just gave up in the last 15 minutes, retiring for an early shut eye. Both days, I corrected the time (and date) in the morning and for a while, it was like I had administered a shot of caffeine. It kept pace. But slowly, throughout the day, it would lose a minute here and there. As if it wasn't such a big deal. I mean, what's a minute amongst old friends? Well, as we learned in grade school, seconds become minutes and minutes become hours and before you know it, you're totally screwed.

Yesterday, my watch gave up. And for a whole day, I was lost in time. Stuck at 9:15am on May 8. Today, I got myself to the jeweler. And would you believe the irony? When I handed over my watch (the very instrument that has kept me in line with the schedules of others), I was told to come back in 30 minutes.