TIME AND TIME AGAIN




 Ever have strange things happen to you?  A couple of days ago, my watches went sort of wacko.  Yes, I have two, one is my serious watch and one is my fun watch.   The serious watch  is black and has a chronograph, alarm, and the date and time display.  The other one is pretty and pink.   It has a pink/grey/white strap and a face with a bouquet of pink and white flowers painted on a black background.  

Usually I wear one of these depending on my mood, but sometimes I wear both!  They keep good time even though I paid less than $10 for them at the Chinese novelty shop by the Greyhound bus depot a few months ago.  I bought them because I lost my Timex watch which I had had for years on the Trailways bus going from Des Moines to Iowa City.  How  you can lose a watch on a bus is beyond me.  But nobody turned it in so I had to replace it.

  It was the morning I volunteered to work a morning shift at the Iowa State Fair--August 19, 2023-- and I was calculating what time I would have to leave to be sure I got there on time.  I swear my black digital watch hopped BACKWARD two minutes.  And when I looked at my pretty analog watch  it was AHEAD by about five minutes.  As far as I can remember, both watches were spot on the previous day.  What is bizarre is that I was glancing at the digital watch frequently to be sure I left on time and that is when I noticed within a couple moments that the watch had jumped back in time.    Neither of the watches matched the wall clock in my room.  I was beginning to wonder how I was going to catch my bus if none of my time pieces were working properly. 

    I decided to depend on the time on my cell phone.  Later when I arrived at the downtown transit center I noticed that the clock at Platform G, where Route 1 arrives, was about 10 minutes off, yet all of the other platforms had the correct time.  There was message below the time on  Platform G that said "Offline."  That was a weird morning but I did get to the job ON TIME.

Now here it is August 21 and all is back to normal.  The black watch, the pink watch, the green clock my flip phone, AND my laptop...all read the same time: 1:25 pm.


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