I have a problem. As problems go, it is quite serious. It is rendering me quite ineffective at work for about 15 minutes of every hour of every day. It is a problem I cannot speak of to anyone I know. If my problem were to be exposed to the scathing glare of humanity, I fear ridicule and ostracization. The stigma attached to my person, I fear, would never wash off during this lifetime.
My problem is simple and yet so complex. I own a watch. It beeps every hour. But that is fine with me, I realize a watch has but one purpose in life and that is to make its master cognizant of the time of the day, and if its duty compels it to emit a beep every hour, then so be it. However, the problem is this : I do not know the location of the watch. Somewhere in the deep dark recesses of my office workspace it resides, of that I am sure, however more precise knowledge of it's whereabouts I do not possess.
So you scoff at me and say compadre, yes, this is quite a problem and we sympathize with you but for the love of Jesus, Mary and Joseph we do not quite catch the degree of extreme gravity of it which you have till now put forth with considerable vagueness.
No, but this is merely half the story. There is another side to this predicament. The watch, the unholy misplaced watch of which I speak, does not keep correct time. In fact, it prides itself on being a few steps ahead of the rest of the world. And so, everyday, it announces the coming of the hour a few minutes earlier than it did the preceding day. Now, I have two choices, neither of which appeal to me. The first, to measure how much time the watch gains everyday, subtract this from the time of the beep on the previous day and then, armed with that knowledge, be prepared for the occurrence of the beep the next day. This option I have rejected because of the sheer amount of labor involved. And so, now I have reconciled myself to the second option, every day to start preparing for the inevitable beep about 15 minutes before it actually occurs.
And so, every day I wait with bated breath and a tight grimace, waiting for that certain beep, feeling almost like a convict in the electric chair, waiting for the switch to be turned on and juice to consume my body. And, this is I fear, how I am destined to live for the next few years of my life.
But I am resolute. I will persist. I will conquer the beep and move forward, for it is but a beep and life is so much more than just waiting for a beep.
3 comments:
Be strong, I trust you'll complete your mission!
of course, it never occured to you to leave the thing at home - or get yourself a new one :)
Sarah : I appreciate your encouragement. It will steel my resolve.
madman : Somehow it has come to know of my search and destroy mission and has burrowed deeper into the impenetrable reaches of my workspace. I have made a decision to burn down my entire desk and annihilate its malevolent resident along with everything else.
Charu : Well, I took it to work because I needed a stopwatch for some analysis (I wanted to measure with some degree of accuracy exactly how much time in seconds I actually perform work) and it was equipped with one. The worst aspect of all this is the utter valuelessness of this watch, being as it were, something that came free with a bottle of mouthwash.
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