Tick Tock Goes the Clock – A Cautionary Tale

I no longer have a functioning relationship with time. 

And it seems to have happened the minute (pardon the pun) my sub-conscious realized I had nowhere to go and no particular time to be there. 

... about thirty seconds after my first pension cheque was deposited.

So beware.  I suspect it will happen to you as well!

When I initially retired, I tried to make a go of it without a wrist watch.  After all, that pesky wrist watch represented everything a work day was and retirement was not – timetables, schedules, and deadlines.  If I indeed had nowhere to go and no particular time to be there, what possible reason could I have for wanting to know what time I wasn’t going to be there.

Well, that experiment turned into an unmitigated disaster!  


It turns out, I have this almost pathological need to know what time it is.  While it is technically true that I have nowhere to go and no particular time to be there, I desperately need to know what time it is when I have this nowhere to go and no particular time to be there.  No matter how passionately I wanted to free myself from the clutches of time, my will-power was too puny to overcome 30+ years of career conditioning.

That said …. I may now know precisely what time it is …  but I can no longer actually get anywhere on time.  For someone who used to pride herself on her punctuality, this new turn of events is very vexing.

I am now perpetually late (or close to) for almost everything.

I can no longer schedule morning doctor or dentist appointments.  All medical appointments must now be booked for after twelve noon, otherwise I will be late.  On more than one occasion I have screeched into the medical center parking lot just as the two o’clock news is starting up on the car radio – and have congratulated myself for being “on time” for a two o’clock appointment.

For someone who used to rigorously schedule “travel time” into every trip – I now find myself wandering aimlessly around the apartment a good ten to fifteen minutes after I should have been long gone.

If it wasn’t for the fact that various forms of public transportation actually do run to a published schedule, I would miss the opening faceoff, tip-off, pitch, and credits of any number of events. 

When I eventually remember I have dry cleaning to pick up, a library book on hold, a prescription to refill – it’s past closing time.

Which might lead one to believe that even though I know I am going to be late for an appointment, I at least know on which day of the week I am going to be late.

Well, you’d be wrong again!

Just because I scribble all my appointments into my calendar, in fact depend on my calendar to tell me where I should be, and am continually harping on other retirees to get and use a calendar, I seem to have lost the ability to actually use a calendar.

More than once occasion has found me standing in the middle of the kitchen, desperately trying to remember if I’m supposed to be somewhere else.  Yes, I’m almost positive I should be somewhere else, but I don’t know if I should be somewhere else today because I’m not really one-hundred percent sure I know what day it actually is.  


And since I don’t know what day it is, looking at my calendar is of no particular use whatsoever. 

So honest to goodness, I have to find a newspaper or fire up my laptop or turn on the weather network to find out not only what day it is, but the actual date as well.

And I am not alone in suffering with this affliction.  More times that I am willing to tell, a pack of us gainfully unemployed have been sitting around a table trying to figure out when and where we are ….

“….. we should make plans to go to (insert destination or event of your choice) on the 25^th ……”

“Yes, that is an excellent suggestion.”

“Yes, let’s go!”

“I’m in!  No, wait.   When is the 25^th?  If it’s a Tuesday, I think I have an appointment.”

“I think it’s a Friday.  Because today is …. Thursday ….”

“No, it’s Wednesday today, isn’t it?  Because I went to yoga class on Tuesday, didn’t I?”

“It can’t be Wednesday today, because Wednesday is recycling day and I didn’t put the 
bins out!”

“ ….. anyone got a calendar?”

I retired so I could be free of clocks; be free of calendars; be free of deadlines.

“Be careful what you wish for” says the adage.

…. so if I was supposed to meet you for lunch yesterday and I didn’t show, I apologize. 

Because if yesterday was Tuesday, that would make today Wednesday. 

Or was it Monday yesterday? 

But anyway, I thought we weren’t meeting until Thursday?


Anyone got a calendar?