Passing The Time

Of all the days, there is one that stands out partiality well in recent memory. I woke up in the desert that day.

I remember that morning especially, all things considered. For me, it started at about 7:00 am pacific time, when the great ball in the sky proclaimed that the waking world was ready to tolerate me once more. Of all the places one can wake up in, the desert isn’t too bad. Most people you talk to will express fear about such an activity. Something about a scorpion, or a rattlesnake, crawling into their sleeping bag in the middle of the night, and cuddling up in the warm space between their feet. I suppose it is possible.

All I will say on the topic, is that I’ve spent a good many nights out there on the desert floor and never had any visits paid by something that creeps or crawls. Likely, I imagine, due to a mutual respect for the environment.

Of course if you were to get past such a thing, the desert is not a bad place to sleep. If you’ve spent more than a handful of late nights searching in the dark for a plot of land to sleep on, as I'm sure you have, you'll know just what I'm talking about. The two prime qualities the desert floor offers are of course its flatness, firstly, and secondly, its potential for being soft, given how malleable sand is. I’m sure someone like you can appreciate how important those things are when selecting a spot for the night, especially in the hours following midnight. 

The chief problem with the arrangement would be discovered hours later, when a ball of gas 93 million miles to the east shows its beautiful face. Once that happens, it’s almost impossible to maintain any degree of unconsciousness. The increased light, for one thing, makes it difficult. You'll find that your eyes are pretty well adapted to the darkness. But the heat plays a large part as well, as the desert sun becomes relentless almost immediately.

Anyway, I woke up in the desert that day. Not exactly when the sun came up, but just about. I would have loved to sleep longer, I really would have. Especially when considering that my pathetic excuse for an Adventure the night before had kept me up far longer than necessary.

Typically, if I’ve been a particularly good boy, enough to earn the next day’s favor, I can sometimes find myself subtly awoken just before the sun peeks out from behind its mountain fortress, when the atmosphere scatters most of the good colors across the sky. And if I’ve been an especially good boy I can sometimes count on a cloud or two to reflect some of those colors back into my eyes. 

Despite my best attempts, it would appear as though I hadn’t been as good of a boy as I’d hoped, as I had missed an opportunity to glimpse any of the good colors that morning. I did my best to lay there as long as I could, and maybe hold onto the last drops of sleep I had in me, and maybe, just maybe, plug back into the dream machine and take another lap, but to little success. A wrist watch sat on the sand next to me, quite broken.

I’m not sure if you would remember, but at the time of this writing I am reluctantly employed at a particular school, instructing our future generations about the great and terrible "outside world”. Tree identification, the speed of light, how to hide in the dark, the whole deal. I know you remember that at least. Well anyway, just a few days prior I was in a much different setting, removing an analog watch from my wrist in a cabin full of terrified adolescent males before making my best attempt at a good night’s sleep. Why remove a watch before bed? Plenty of good reasons, the horrendous ticking chief among them. 

Being as experienced as I am at the task, the removing of my watch has become one quick motion. The type of quick motion that, in that particular instance, resulted in the watch being thrown, or gently tossed, a good couple feet from my bed onto a rather hard concrete floor, quite unintentionally. This of course broke the watch. Now, broken can mean a number of things, and as of that moment, broken did not equate to non-functional. However the face had a nice crack from about 12:00 to 5:00 o’clock.

Now this is not the first time something like this has happened, especially to me, which allowed me to maintain a sort of calm. In fact, in the moment, I recalled a message I had sent telepathically to my future self for this very possibility: “this is why we buy cheap watches”. You see, for the previous year or two I had been largely wearing a different, if not extremely similar, wrist watch, also analog. A watch is lucky if it lives long enough to see the day when its battery dies, as that particular watch had. A very common occurrence for most watches, especially those worn by individuals leading less extraordinary lives than mine.

At this school that I mentioned before, our humble ensemble of instructors are almost defined by their constant dependency on the time, as defined by an imperial society. Likely due to an almost completely scheduled existence. For this reason, a watch of some sort is all but required.

Of course, I understand the simple fact that one is far less likely to feel in a rush, so to speak, when one has no concept of the Time. And by that I mean specifically the counting of the subdivisions of the subdivisions of the average time between sun-up and sun-down. But, if the man, or in this case woman, demands an accurate knowledge of the Time, I would much rather have it displayed on my wrist in plain view. For this reason, when my watch needed a new ticker (a joke I will use again), it was imperative that I replace it as soon as possible for fear of corporal punishment. Or public humiliation, whichever proved worse.

The only issue was that on that particular week in December, when the watch decided to give it all up, I didn’t have much in the form of extra time, ironically, for reasons I frankly do not remember. Ordinarily I would have found the task a personal matter and a source of great pleasure once completed, as tasks often provide. But in this particular case I requested the help of my friend Emma in the matter. Or rather, she offered it to me. I really was grateful.

If I can expand for a moment, not many people I know tend to go out of their way to make my life better. So, on the occasions when they do, I become so overcome with guilt from the unfamiliarity that I often refuse to accept it at all. As was almost the case with my poor watch. Emma, oftentimes, proved herself to be more than willing on many occasions to make my life better, and now that she’s gone, I’m not sure I would want anyone to fix a watch for me in her stead.

She didn’t even request reimbursement for the eight-some dollars it cost to replace the battery. Upon receiving my repaired watch, I was more than happy to repeat my joke from before and announce to anyone willing to listen that my watch had itself a new ticker, and I did just that on more than one occasion.

That same night, a Thursday I believe, I was invited by a coworker to participate in a rather impromptu performance of “Passing the Time” at closing campfire. In the skit, my friend Will, although reluctantly, and myself threw a watch back and forth, thus passing the time, for the amusement of our youthful audience. The watch we used was mine of course, and, for which I will blame the dim lighting, the watch missed my hands and hit the floor with a undeniable smack. If memory serves, the crowd felt a collective stab of pain.

In this case broken did indeed equate to not functioning. Battery or no battery.

So, a new watch was in order. It took me quite a while to get around to replacing it. Something about a long holiday break from work, the desire to find a “sustainable alternative”, and lack of motivation due to the nature of the damage. All incredibly harrowing stories that I will spare you. Incidentally, you were present for much of that time anyway.

Which brings us back to a few nights ago in that Bixby cabin at YMCA Camp Oaks, right about when the replacement watch smacked into the cement floor. Not loud enough to wake a sleeping pre-teen post-bedtime-story, but loud enough for me to recall the situation stated above, with a certain dread. It would appear that my dread was well warranted, as the impact had eventually led to the ceasing of the watch's primary function. Even so, that night was likely the first moment in several years of my life when I considered with any sort of seriousness the concept of owning a digital watch.

You see, a digital watch is not full of the shiny little gears you’ll find so cleverly placed in an analog watch, and thus far less breakable. However, as a child I observed a slight allergic reaction of sorts when exposed to nickel elements for extended periods of time, such as on the back of a watch face. For this reason, as I’m sure you’ll be quite interested to know, I steer mostly in the direction of an analog watch. Purely because they have a greater chance of including the feature of a strap that continues across the back of the face. Riveting details for you, I'm sure.

Now, leaning up on one elbow in my sleeping bag on the desert floor, I, an informed individual, happened to know that the sun rose at this part of the year, and in this part of the world, at roughly 6:30 am. And roughly given the height of the sun above the horizon I presumed an addition of no more than 30 minutes. Laying on the sand next to me, the hands of the watch remained still.