Napalm and Silly Putty

FACE-TO-FACE WITH THE CLOCK

I remember when they tried to teach me to tell time as a little boy. What they didn’t know, of course, was that you don’t tell time; time tells you. Still they tried.

“Now, George, the big hand is on…”

“I don’t have a big hand. Both my hands are little.”

“Never mind. Just look at the clock.”

And I did. It was wonderful. I love the face of a clock. To me, there is great emotion attached to the face of a clock. A conventional analog clock.

Digital clocks are all right in their place, I suppose, but they lack the friendly spatial relationships that exist between the hands and the numerals on an analog clock.

There’s a psychological component: to me, the first half of any hour, as the minute hand falls from 12 to 6, passes a lot more quickly than the second half, when it has to struggle upward, fighting gravity all the way.

I’ll say this much: If I had only half an hour to live, I’d want it to be the second half. I just know it would last a little longer.