Just Setting the Clock

My Grandfather was an interesting man. Not wishing to eulogize him here, which would not have been his wish, ( and would be almost 19 years too late) I just want to explore one facet of his psyche,

Clocks.

with apologies to anyone who knew him better, these are my recollections.
This was a man who was punctual to a fault and appreciated clocks. His house was LOADED with them, and they all were set to the correct time.

In fact, it was well known that daylight savings time, and the switch back, were momentous occasions in the house, as each clock was reset to the correct time. I remember sitting in the kitchen in Paramus and thinking that I never had to turn my head to see what time it was.

To a degree, I have a similar attachment to time keeping devices. I love clocks. I think there were 17 of them in my first one bedroom apartment, and I have always attempted to relive the experience of never having to turn my head in ANY room to see what time it is. At home we also have projection clocks that shine the time on the ceiling at night. Currently, we have about 25 clocks in the house. ( I counted them last night, a lot fewer than I thought, much to my chagrin. I shall try to gt more, if I can sneak them past Lovey.)

However, I am remiss, ( and I guess the blood has thinned somewhat) in keeping all of my devices set to the same time, or sometimes set at all. I have endured ribbing from Lovey and others that all of the clocks in the house show a different time ( including, incredibly, the atomic clock, until I figured how to set the DST button, so it stopped going back an hour every time I reset it). I also am not so diligent about keeping up with the daylight savings time switches, and sometimes a clock will go ( gasp!) a day or two before I get around to changing it. However, others in the family have kept up the tradition. Let me explain.

I have one cousin who has three oven clocks, and they were ( at the time I was there, might still be) set to all change at THE EXACT SAME SECOND. Now that is dedication, but all this is a prelude to my real reason for this post.

I went to the Yankee game a couple of days ago with one of my favorite cousins. One who was very close to my grandfather and this clock thing must have rubbed off in a big way. We were going home from the game when he looked at the clock on my radio and saw it was off. Now I bought this car second hand, and there was no manual for the car, much less the after market radio. I was off by an hour ten at first,which went down to ten minutes with the DST switch, then I had some battery issues, and each time the battery died, it reset. When I finally changed the battery, it was EXACTLY 47 minutes fast, so I would just do the math.

This would not fly for my dear smiling cousin, so he started trying different combinations to get it to work, finally took off the detachable face, and pulled the model number. (Tinkering to get things to work better was another habit of my Grandfather, and that has been transferred to many members of my family.)

I wasn't home ten minutes when he e-mailed me both the manual and the specific section that covered the clock. ( He also absorbed a tremendous ability to take care of things IMMEDIATELY, which is something I admire, am envious of, and should aspire to).

Well, I got in the car the next day, and promptly SET THE CLOCK. It was at that point that I had this tremendous feeling of elation that I FINALLY had a clock that was correct! I was thrilled, I called my cousin to thank him, not realizing how good it felt to actually be able to look at a clock and have the correct time without doing any math, especially for the timing of the traffic updates, which rule my life twice a day.

I guess there is more of Opa in me than I realized.