My Clock

There's a clock on my bedroom wall. It's old, I've had it for maybe thirteen years or so and it has always been displayed on one wall or another. All things considered, it's nothing special. The clock itself is made of cheap, black plastic, with "golden" numbers protruding from the black ring surrounding the central picture of a train crossing. Given batteries, it may even make noise, I don't remember that well. It can never keep time. Whenever it's actually working it loses about five minutes per day, sometimes less, and sometimes more. I haven't gotten it down to an exact science yet.

So why keep it? Why would I bother keeping something so utterly worthless when I could replace it with something more efficient?

Well, for a time spanning the end of middle school to today the clock has been frozen on 10:59:36. The second hand used to switch back and forth from 35 and 36, but like the rest of the clock it slowly came to a halt. So what, right? The clock is frozen, big deal. The time is only correct once a day (twice if you count AM, but who does that?) making it utterly useless for the other twenty three hours, one minute, and twenty four seconds of the day. Otherwise it's completely frozen.

So why? For exactly that reason. It's completely frozen.

I see that clock and suddenly time completely stops. I have a minute, I have an hour to just stop and take a deep breath. They say time is relative, but when I look up at that train frozen in its frame there is no time at all. I can float in infinite nothing for as long as I'd like because as long as I have that clock nothing has changed, no time has passed. To give myself those brief moments of reprieve is to make everything seem less monumental. When I find myself in the middle of a sleepless night, I don't look at it and count the hours of sleep I may actually end up getting. No, instead I see that I have all the time in the world, and that exhaustion is always fleeting. It takes my mountains and reverts them to molehills, and at 10:59:36 I can say to myself that everything is perfect.

And then reality snaps back. My phone goes off, prominently displaying the time, I look over my shoulder to see the (usually) accurate digital clock on my book shelf, or I get called from the other room and suddenly it's all back again. I remember that I can't sleep, I remember everything weighing on my bony shoulders. Yet, the clock is still there. Unmoved. Unchanged. Always there when I need the Earth to stop spinning for only a moment.

11:11? Don't make me laugh. 10:59:36 is where wishes come true.