The day/check button my
answering machine says it's Thursday, 3:42 am, in a frighteningly robotic,
disembodied woman's voice, and the clock radio that came with the phone says it's only yet 3:37 am. My poor, dilapidated CD player, which now dual functions as a CD eater, claims 3:38. My watch reads 5:41 am. I never reset it from my
trip to Iowa.
And these are all
leaps and bounds of whirring mechanism ahead of the server time, which is 10:13:44. I set them all ahead intentionally. It means I'm never late.
The
trick is not just to fool your clocks. Clocks are dimwitted creatures with limited capacity for distrust of their
human companions. Clocks are like dogs. No, the real skill is in warping time around yourself until you are actually running on time. It is not you who is early, it is others who are late.
Otherwise, you
adapt and take into account as you rush through your shower, or fork down those
Wheaties (and what are you doing, eating cereal with a fork?), that things aren't so bad because your clocks are all fast and you have however many minutes to
spare. At that rate, you might as well not offset your clocks at all. Worse yet, you may begin overestimating how fast they actually are, and now you are not early, you are not on time: you are late.