Confessional in Sint-Pauluskerk,Antwerp

I wrote the other night of my current state of heightened diplomatic tensions with Time. That state persisted yesterday and today, in the form of a titanic struggle with instruments of time measurement.

Or to put it in layman’s terms (I am, after all, a layman), I had to buy a new alarm clock.

For the last few years I’ve had an alarm clock that pleased me more than any I’ve ever owned. I got it in a special offer from my credit card company. It received a radio signal from the atomic clock in Colorado to keep the time accurate and, as a special bonus, it projected the time on the ceiling in red light (I’ve always loved projection clocks, but have only had a use for them since I got Lasik surgery). But lately that clock has been doing funny things, and I decided to get a new one. I thought finding another atomic/projection clock at Target was probably too much to ask, and of course I was right. I did buy a clock which seemed to suggest it was radio controlled (it wasn’t) and I tried it out last night.

I’d failed to note that it actually had a special feature—a built in Fresnel light, which threw a stark blue blaze over the whole room, inclining me to dreams of being a cornered fugitive, spotlights from cop cars blazing in all the windows, and a voice on a bullhorn yelling, “Come out with your hands up, Baby Face! Nobody has to get hurt!”

So I tried Kmart tonight. I knew they’d had a real atomic clock last time I’d checked, but my Kmart will be closing soon, and they’re letting the stock deplete, and they didn’t have any. Tried Walgreens and CVS, but their clock selections are on the way to extinction. I suppose everybody uses their cell phones to wake up nowadays.

By that time my customarily suppressed hunting instinct had kicked in, and I had no choice but to drive all the way up to WalMart, where they indeed had an atomic alarm clock for me. No projection light, of course (I’d given up on that dream). But the light only comes on if I hit the snooze bar. So I’m at peace with it. Mostly.

Now I’ll have to take the first clock back to Target. Hate to do that. I just know I’ll get a lecture from the customer service person— “Didn’t you read the box? Didn’t you understand what you read? Why is it our problem that you misunderstood the clear labeling?”

I also have to return some books at work, from a class whose instructor wildly overestimated his enrollment. I expect I’ll get the same lecture from Thomas Nelson (or one of his minions).