Mental illness

Something remarkable happened today which I think is a sure sign of mental illness.

I’m walking down the hall to deliver some journal entries to accounting.

I pass a clock.  It says “3:20”.  That is not remarkable at all.  Coincidental, maybe.  But certainly not remarkable.

A few minutes later (11, to be exact) I pass the same clock and it reads “3:31” as most clocks do 11 minutes after they display 3:20.

That, too, can be generally regarded as unremarkable.  The various functions of clocks shouldn’t be a mystery to any of us who have lived any portion of our lives in the 20^th century. 

Had the clock read 3:31 5000 years ago, that would have been a remarkable mystery to the ancients who gazed upon it.  This is partly because they would have never seen a digital readout before and partly because they would have no concept of electricity.  In fact, had we gazed upon the clock 5000 years ago we very rightly would have been amazed due to the startling lack of electricity coursing through the world at the time and the equally startling lack of our being born so very long ago.  It’s quite a trick to look at a digital clock before you are born and it’s an even greater trick to do it before either electricity or digital clocks have been discovered or invented.

Had the clock read something other than 3:31, being 11 minutes past 2:20, that may have been grounds to consider something remarkable had happened.  Had the clock read, say, 4:35, that would have been remarkable considering a full 1 hour and 15 minutes would have been recorded in a mere 11 minutes time.  Time travel can be a wonderful thing, but during the work day it can become a rather stressful skill.  During your own leisure time it is not only dangerous but also very ill advised due to the significant possibility of becoming your own grandfather.  However, the prospect of traveling back into time to deposit a coin in a bank and become a fantastically rich super billionaire is appealing, the rules of economics guarantees that your billions will become so devalued during the ensuing years by inflation that the notion is hardly practical.  Also, the notion of traveling back from a resource poor time to salvage natural resources from a resource rich time can have several and disastrous consequences—though some inquiring minds suspect that is exactly what is happening today.

Finally, had the clock read 97:61 it could have been considered remarkable because there is no such time according to our usual and universally accepted manner of recording time.  Of course, the term “universal” only refers to earthly time keeping, since we have no real idea what units are used in the various and sundry extra-solar systems in the vast, vast stretches of mostly empty space surrounding us.

 

 

That said, the wholly remarkable thing that happened as I passed the clock 2 times in 11 minutes was this:

The first thought that popped into my head was “hmm, that’s a little less than a mile at marathon pace.”

 

I’d kindly appreciate you runners getting out of my head, now.