What did you do with your extra second?

Time waits for no man. It does,
however, wait for women.
Willard
 
Does anybody really know
what time it is?
Chicago
 

The recent time change got me to thinking, which is usually dangerous. Julie and I have this thing when the time changes that drives Sandra crazy. Is this God’s time or man’s time?

You probably missed it. I know I did and I’m the one who usually stays on top of these things so that I can keep you suitably informed.
We actually gained a second, a “leap second” it’s been called, back on Dec. 31, 2016. What you do with this extra time is totally up to you.

This is the 27th time that a leap second has been added to our official time. Almost half a minute. What happens is that earth’s rotation is ever-so-slightly slowing, so occasionally another second has to be added to “let a lagging earth catch up to super-accurate clocks.”
Whoever looks after time, perhaps a Secretary of Time or a Time Czar, decided that the earth wasn’t being as regular as a clock. It can speed up or slow down, so our clocks need an adjustment now and then. The last adjustment made the last second before 8:00 on Dec. 31 last two seconds. 

Now, I don’t pretend to understand any of this.  

I know that time is money and these are two things I’ve never understood. This may be the reason I never seem to have much of either of them.

Someone once asked me something quite disturbing: What did I do with all my time? I hate trick questions.

I know I have the same amount of time that Einstein had. I seriously doubt if Einstein had TV and Netflix to watch, though, or iPhones to play with. If he had, he wouldn’t have had any time, either.

Time has always interested me because I seem to have so little of it. It’s another one of those mysteries of life, like where does your paycheck go?

I once checked out a copy of “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking. I checked it out, mind you, I didn’t say I understood it. Hawking is one of the world’s foremost mathematicians; I am one of the leastmost.

One of the things Hawking said that I did understand is that time is not absolute. Time is different, according to where you are and how you are moving. Hawking says that you can place two identical clocks, one on the ground and the other on top of a water tower, and one will run slower than the other.

This would explain why weekends last about an hour and workdays 27. It would also explain why time all but stopped while I was in the Army and not one civilian noticed. Time flies when you’re having fun.

Time is also different for women than it is for men. Let us say you have to be somewhere at 7:00. The woman may start getting ready at 7:00 and think nothing of it, while the man, who has been ready since Tuesday, sits around fidgeting.
(Let me interrupt myself here to insert the following: The aforesaid women are merely hypothetical and are only mentioned to make a point, no matter how weak, and do not refer to any women I know now or may know in the future.)

The man is confused because he mistakenly thought he was supposed to be there at seven. The woman, living in a different time zone altogether, knows better.

The woman, however, may see time in more concrete terms when it comes to, say, mowing the yard.

Example: “If you don’t mow the yard today, I am going to take the machete and cut a path out of here back to Momma’s.”
The man knows, just as the dictionary states, that “time is the moment when something is to occur.”

Example: “I am going to mow the yard just as soon as I can find the lawn mower, it there’s not a ball game on tonight.”

Men understand this concept of time, which Einstein called the “I will get around to it someday” theory. This does not always set well with womenfolk, who tend to want some things done right now, especially if those things involve plumbing and rushing water.

“A Brief History of Time” does not say where time goes, however, which is what I desperately wanted to know. And can you save time, even though there are only 24 hours in a day for everyone? For someone who is chronometrically challenged, these are important questions.

I’ve tried to budget my time better by making a chart of how I spend my time. Of course, there are eight hours for work and eight hours for sleep. The way I figure — and I’m not a mathematician mind you — that leaves only eight hours to eat, get gas (not always at the same restaurant), bathe, shave, go to the grocery store and watch TV. Going to the grocery store is often a multi-trip event, especially if I confuse the tuna in spring water with the pineapple in its own juice.

This means that there are only a couple of hours left in the day to try to get out of mowing the yard. Frankly, I don’t know where Einstein found the time to wash the dishes.