They Killed The Time Lady

The clocks in our house drive me kind of crazy. None of them match. My alarm clock is something like seven minutes faster than The Muse's alarm clock. The clocks in our kitchen are somewhere in between, but they don't match either. Until very recently, I would have resolved these issues by calling the Time Lady.

You know the Time Lady. You could call 767-8900 and she would tell you exactly what time it was down to the ten-second intervals. "At the tone, Pacific Standard Time will be one forty-three p.m. and thirty seconds." No matter what, she always had this very smooth tone, just oozing pleasantness and knowledge. It always reminded of a really nice librarian. I began calling the Time Lady as a kid. It didn't occur to me until much later that the time quotes could have been assembled by a computer from little quotes from the Time Lady. I mean, for her to have recorded each individual ten-second interval, she would have had to record -- according to my calculations -- at least 69,120 time statements (6 10-second intervals per minute x 60 minutes per hour x 24 hours per day x 4 continental American time zones x 2 time alternatives [Standard and Daylight Savings] = 69,120). How could anyone have done that? But her time statements never sounded constructed, unlike the apartment information that the Muse and I got before we moved to the Bay Area ("Off . . . street par-king"). A few years ago, though, I was clicking channels at some point and saw some story in which they actually showed the Time Lady recording her time statements. She looked just as I imagined -- kind of bluish hair, glasses a little out of style. It made me happy.

And now they have killed her. Well, they haven't killed her -- I haven't heard her that the lady herself is dead. The phone company, however, no longer makes her time statements available. If you call 767-8900, you apparently get nothin'. This is wrong, wrong like how Mr. Dry Wit's friend described it as wrong when everyone on Sesame Street -- not just Big Bird -- became able to see Mr. Snuffleupogas. My kids will not be able to call the Time Lady to find out exactly what time is.

Nor will I and this bugs me. We have fewer and fewer common experiences these days. Everyone uses the Web and their My Yahoo pages and their iPods to edit the world per their predilections. The Time Lady, however, could tell everyone what time it was. Now what the hell are we all supposed to rely on? Atomic clocks are not yet available at Sharper Image or in SkyMall, as far as I know. What are the other options to find out exactly what time it is? The little clock in the bottom right-hand corner of your Microsoft Windows screen? Screw that. Bill Gates has his money-grubbing fingers in enough places in our lives. I don't need him to be defining time for me. The government? I'll bet Gates would send Dick Cheney a daily Excel file on everyone who accessed the government's official clock.

Where have you gone, Mrs. Time Lady? A nation turns its lonely ears to you.