Yesterday was the day America sprang forward. I'm talking about clocks, of course. People all over the country were waking up and discovering they had forgotten to change their clocks. A few confused souls had no doubt set their clock back one hour (one of those confused souls called me an hour earlier than they were supposed to today, that is how I know). Some other confused souls had confused cell phones (I was one of those souls), phones that failed to update their location and promptly lost their minds.
You'd think.
As I said, my phone lost its mind and required a reboot to reorient itself regarding it's physical location on the planet. Then I discovered Google Calendar tried to update me to the Mountain Time Zone, probably because I had failed to differentiate between Mountain Standard Time and Mountain Daylight Time in the settings. (New to Arizona!) As the day wore on, my brain wore out, overloaded with numbers and well-meaning people trying to set me straight. My friend E said we are the same time zone as Mountain Time. Yes, but E did not say Mountain Standard Time. Apparently my Google Calendar has been on Mountain Daylight Time. That is my guess.
Stick a fork in me, I'm done. I have spent the entire day trying to understand time. It doesn't help that my caller today set their clock backward rather than forward. Thus, because my phone lost its mind, the caller was calling two hours before our expected call time, which propelled me instantly into a crisis of confidence. (Who am I? Where am I? Does anyone really know what time it is?) That hissing sound you hear is my brain overheating.
I finally figured it out.
I've been visualizing time as a round thing, like the face of an analog clock, when I should have been visualizing time as a series of rectangles. It's no wonder I'm having trouble. My brain has never been good with analog time. When I was nine years old, I spent a fair part of one afternoon standing in the hall staring at the huge clock on the wall. I was not allowed to reenter the classroom until I could "tell time." Humiliated and ashamed, I stood there staring, until an adult walked by. I cheated, of course, because what nine year old understands that integrity builds character, and I asked the kind adult to tell me what time it was. With the magic formula in hand, I triumphantly reentered the classroom, told my teacher the time, and resumed my seat, still having no clue what made the big hand different from the little hand.
I eventually caught on, as we often do, we learn to tie our shoes and ride a bike and tell time on a round clock, and since then, time for me has been a round thing. Now, because I moved to Arizona, I know it's a rectangular thing.
Rectangles called time zones divide up the face of the North American continent. You knew this. In the spring, through a magic known as collective agreement (and an illness known as collective inertia), the time zones get off their butts and shift to the right one hour. In the fall, the time zones sigh, heave themselves to their wobbly feet, and move back to the left one hour to settle in for winter.
And what happens to me? I sit still, like a hotspot under the surface of the earth, while the time zones shift above me. Tectonic time zone plates.
The consequence of standing still as the time zones shift is that I always have to be aware of which time zone is squatting over me. Is it the one to the left of me, or the one to the right? Yesterday it was the time zone to the right of me—those other Mountain Time Zone guys, the ones on Daylight Time, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, those states have been hunkering over the Bat Cave for the past six months. To my confusion, I wake up this morning and find myself squashed by the weight of California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada.
I am awakening to the power of geography! Who knew this would happen from moving to Arizona and gloating about not having to change my clocks. I tell you, I would gladly change my clocks twice a year to avoid having to be hyper-conscious of what the states on either side of me are doing. Yesterday I was on Mountain Daylight Time, now I'm on Pacific Time! All without changing my own clocks. I thought it would be so great to sit still while everyone shifted around me. Instead I discover everyone shifted in unison, like a grand flock of swallows, and I'm the lone scrub quail, grousing in the dust.
