One of the side-effects of working from home is that I often don’t know what day it is. I rarely know the date. Come to think of it, I sometimes don’t know the month or year. I haven’t worn a wristwatch in the past decade and it’s all a blur anyway now that I’m always at home.

Most people don’t mind when you ask for the time or the date. Sometimes I push it to extremes in an attempt to avoid strange looks. Rather than just admit I have no idea what the date is, feigning forgetfulness, I’ll ask, “Ok, rats, what is the date… today is the 19th, right?” Then they’ll give me that puzzled frown, the furrowed brow sizing me up, the quick glance to make sure I’m unarmed. “It’s the 2nd,” they’ll say. “Ah. Right! Thanks!”

Fortunately, embarrassment is something I gave up in high school as a waste of time.

One wonders if this langorous attitude towards the endless, swift, and unstoppable passage of time contributes to my continual astonishment at how fast the children are growing. I doubt it. There’s just something miraculous about how quickly they grow and gain sentience. Regardless of how closely you’ve been watching the clock, it is nothing if not astounding that a slushy glob of cells, in a mere five years, can grow into a creature that can spontaneously, in the middle of the living room, start dancing and burst into verses of “U Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer. I doubt if any researcher — anthropologist, psychologist, or chronologist — has ever said, “Ah. From glob to MC Hammer in 5 years 1 month 23 days 8 seconds. Yep, right in line with predictions — nothing to see here.”

And, yes, I know he calls himself “Hammer” now but he’ll always be MC to me.

Comments

1. pete on 2005-06-06 11:43:49 wrote: i work in an office and even i sometimes don’t know what day/date it is. thank god for the little clock in the bottom right corner of my windows desktop. ;)