Time after Time

My husband, my son, and I went on a post-Christmas shopping trip this past year and had a really good time. Among the items my husband purchased were a pair of matching clocks for our bedside tables. Digital. Up-to-date. Streamline. Nice.

Yesterday it was really windy here. And cold. We even had some snow, which really excited us since we live in the Deep South and don’t see the frozen white stuff often. At some point during the day our electricity flickered off for a few seconds, I guess because the wind was blowing so hard it affected the power lines. Anyway, the power was off just long enough to make almost every clock in the house blink an annoying reminder to reset them all. Ah, but not our new streamline bedside clocks. They were on the ball and, as John Cameron Swayze, the Timex man, used to say, “they take a licking and keep on ticking.” So we went around and reset the various blinking electronics.

Eventually bedtime came around and we remembered to set our clocks ahead one hour, since Daylight Saving Time would begin in the middle of our snoozing. (Note: It’s Daylight SAVING Time, not Daylight SAVINGS Time. Sorry, but I’m ticky about that kind of stuff.) I hardly ever set an alarm, but I decided I would set the alarm on my cell phone, which I keep by the bed, so when I woke up, looked at my new clock and it was 7:50 a.m. and my cell phone alarm should have gone off at 7:30, I was a little perturbed. I got up and was getting ready for church this morning when I realized that my watch and my cell phone said 7:30 and my new bedside clock said 8:30. I was confused. My husband was up by then and I questioned him as to his opinion on the situation. We then proceeded to check every timepiece we could and also a couple of TV stations. Everything read 7:30 except our bedside clocks, which couldn’t possibly be wrong because we both remembered setting them one hour ahead as we crawled into bed…at the same time. We were in the room together when we were setting our clocks. We can vouch for each other.

Now we were both confused. I consulted the internet, doing a quick search for “atomic clock” and checking the first two hits. Yes, it was this weekend that we were supposed to set our clocks ahead. We have always taken great joy in always remembering the cute little verse we were taught years ago to remember how to set our clocks for the time changes: Fall back, spring up. Clever, huh?

Finally, we realized what had happened…our new clocks were programmed to set the time all by their onesies, just like our computer and just like our cell phones. Sooooo…not only did we set our clocks ahead one hour as we retired last night, but at 2:00 a.m. today our new, intelligent clocks also set themselves ahead one hour.

My husband was not amused as he had not slept well on Friday night and had looked forward to getting a good night’s sleep last night, albeit minus an hour. No, he was not amused at all. He’s ticky about that kind of stuff.