Napalm and Silly Putty

HAVE A GOOD TIME

You know what bothers me? People who want to know the time. The ones who come up and ask me, “What time is it?” as if I, personally, were responsible for keeping track of such things.

Sometimes they phrase it a little differently. They’ll say, “Do you have the time?” And I say, “No. I don’t believe I do. I certainly didn’t have it this morning when I left the house. Could you possibly have left it somewhere? You know, now that you mention it, I believe the navy has the time. In Washington. They keep it in an observatory or something, and they let a little of it out each day. Not too much, of course. Just enough. They wouldn’t want to give us too much time; we might not use it wisely.” Sometimes, in a playful mood, when asked if I have the time, I’ll say, “Yes,” and simply walk away.

When Is It, Anyway?

I do that because I hate to disappoint people. You see, there is no time. There’s just no time. I don’t mean, “We’re late, there’s no time.” I mean, there is no time.

After all, when is it? Do you know? No one really knows when it is. We made the whole thing up. It’s a human invention. There are no numbers in the sky. Believe me, I’ve looked; they’re not there. We made the whole thing up.

So, when are we? Sometimes we think we know where we are, but we really don’t know when we are. For all we know, it could be the middle of last week.

And the time zones are no help; they’re all different. In fact, in parts of India the time zones actually operate on the half hour instead of the hour. What is that all about? Does anybody really know what time it is?

What Year Do You Have?

And never mind a piddly little half-hour difference in India, how about thousands of years? The major calendars disagree by thousands of years. To the Chinese, this is 4699; the Hebrews think it’s 5762; the Muslims swear it’s 1422. No telling what the Mayans and Aztecs would say if they were still around. I guess their time ran out.

Remember, folks, these are calendars we’re talking about, instruments specifically designed to keep track of time. And they’re all different. And they’re not just off by a couple of weeks, this is thousands of goddamn years we’re talking about. How did that happen?

Our current (Gregorian)calendar is such an amateur show that every four years we have to cram in an extra day just to make the whole thing work. We call it February 29. Personally, I don’t believe it. Deep down, I know it’s really March 1. I mean, it just feels like March 1, doesn’t it?

But even that simple quadrennial adjustment doesn’t fix things, so every 100 years we suspend that rule and dispense with the extra day. Unless, of course, the year is divisible by 400, in which case we suspend the suspension and add the extra day. But that’s still not quite enough, so every 4,000 years we suspend that rule too, and back comes February 29!

Here’s how we got to this sorry state: The Julian calendar was introduced in 46 B.C., the Roman year 709, but it was off by eleven minutes a year, so by 1582 there was an accumulated error of ten days. Accordingly, that year Pope Gregory XIII decreed that the day following October 4 would be called October 15. They just skipped ten days. Threw them out. Officially, in 1582, no one was born in France, Italy, Spain or Portugal during the period October 5 through October 14. Weird, huh?

But even weirder, Britain didn’t adopt the Gregorian calendar till. 1752, when they dropped eleven days out of September. Since this also applied to the American colonies, officially, no one was born here from September 3 through September 13, 1752. Except Indians. By the way, during that same year New Year’s Day was moved from March 25 to January 1. The way it had been handled before, for example, was that March 24, 1750, would be followed by March 25, 1751. Pretty fucked up, huh? And you thought that big millennium party you went to was being held right on time.

Staying in the “Now”

We try hard to keep track of time, but it’s futile. You can’t pin it down. For example, there’s a moment coming… it’s not here yet… it’s still in the future… it’s on the way… it hasn’t arrived… it’s getting closer… here it is… Oh shit, it’s gone!

We use words like “now.” But it’s a useless word, because every time you say it, it means something different.

“Can you tell me the time?”

“Which time did you want? Now? Or the time you asked me? Or how about now? Is this the time you want? Speak up, this stuff isn’t standing still.”

And think of the phrase “just now.”

“Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“Just now.”

“You mean, ‘Just then.’”

“Yes, just then. Wait, there it is again!”

“When?”

“Just now.”

Everything we think of as “now” is either the very recent past or the very near future. There’s no present. “Welcome to the present.” ZOOM! Gone again!

Keep It Vague

It’s all so imprecise that people sometimes don’t bother with minutes and hours at all; they keep things purposely vague.

“What time you got?”

“Just after.”

“Just after? Jeez, my watch is slow. I got ‘goin’ on.’”

It’s amazing how something as precisely calibrated as time can be described so loosely. Especially where short periods of time are concerned. We say “at once,” “immediately,” “right away,” “just like that,” “no time at all,” “nothing flat,” “at a moment’s notice.”

And one that I never understood: “Before you can say Jack Robinson.” You don’t hear that much anymore, do you? Maybe Jack ran out of time. Maybe he was an Aztec.

And let’s not forget a “jiffy.” Or a “flash.” Do you know which is quicker? Well, I looked it up; in fact, there are two jiffies in a flash. And there are six flashes in the twinkling of an eye. No one seems to know how many twinklings of an eye there are in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. And, by the way, why is it two shakes of a lamb’s tail? Wouldn’t the basic unit of measurement be one shake of a lamb’s tail?

All of a Sudden

Another vague word is “soon.” For me, soon has an emotional quality; it has great potential for sadness.

“Is Daddy ever coming to visit us again?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

Here’s a spooky one: “Sooner than you think.” Wow! Sooner than I think. That’s like “before you know it.”

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

ZOOM!

“Holy shit! He did it!!”

“Sooner or later,” “one of these days,” “any day now,” “from time to time,” “every now and then,” “a little while.”

“A little while” is nice. So gentle. “I’ll be home in a little while.” That wouldn’t bother you, would it? I think anyone could wait a little while. It doesn’t sound too threatening.

“Your father is sick, but he still has ‘a little while.’” That’s different from “a short time.” A short time sounds terminal.

“Your father has only a ‘short time.’”

If I were about to be executed, I’d much rather have a little while than a short time.

A Good Time

By the way, do you have a favorite period of time? It isn’t easy to select a favorite period of time, there are so many appealing ones. I have a few.

To me, the most useful period of time is five minutes. That seems to be the one most people choose when they’re pressed. “I’ll be there in five minutes.” “Give me five minutes, will ya?” “Whattaya, kiddin’? I could fix that thing in five minutes!”

That’s all most people want. Five minutes. A good, solid, respectable period of time. And it goes by fast. I think I could do just about anything for five minutes. Even the most distasteful task.

“Let’s go talk to George Bush.”

“Are you kiddin’? He’s an asshole.”

“Look, just five minutes, okay?”

“Okay, five minutes. But no more! After that I’m gonna puke.”

Fifteen minutes is a popular period of time. But it has an institutional ring to it. A regulatory quality. It sounds like it’s associated with something either compulsory or forbidden.

“The exchange window will only be open for fifteen minutes.”

“You have fifteen minutes to fill out the forms…”

“In fifteen minutes we will be coming around and…”

I like twenty minutes better. Twenty minutes sounds kind of free and sporty.

“I’ll be back to pick up those test papers in fifteen minutes. Then you’ll have a twenty-minute break.”

“Hey guys, cover me with the boss, will ya? I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

Twenty minutes. Just enough time to get laid.

Have a good time.