Telling Time

Wow. My last rant got a lot of attention. Eight comments. That's a new personal best. Anyways, time to blow the dust off and get back to incoherent ramblings.

Let me tell you something about me. I never wear a watch, mostly because I always have my cell phone or laptop with me. Let me tell you something about the rest of my family. The members that wear watches like to make those that don't wish they did, or at least annoy them. If you ask them what time it is, they can't simply say "oh, it's five fifty-four." No, instead they reply in the same way a math teacher would. "A quarter before seven", "a half of eight", and "ten till nine" are some examples. These might not be brain-busting paper-filling trigonometric equations denoting the rationality of time and space, but they take more time to compute than simple "five fifty-four." Maybe I'm just slow, but it takes me at least five times longer to do the math than it does to just go "oh, ok, it's fucking five fifty-four," and it makes me wonder how long did it take them to come up with the formula? Do they think it up every time their watch changes?

You know what's worse? Another thing they do is tell you the math part WITHOUT THE DAMN HOUR! "A quarter till." Oh great, it's a quarter till...A quarter till what, exactly? A quarter till you tell me what the hour would be if it were two hours before the last hour of eight half-days ago? Not only does this method of telling me the time not involve any simple flat-out numbers. It's also incredibly and entirely useless unless you were aware of the time a couple minutes before.

To be honest, I think it's kind of elitist of them. They have the luxury of being able to look at their wrist and instantly know the time, while those asking are unworthy of such instant information. They want the time, but they cant handle the time! (I watched A Few Good Men today) They are undeserving! Therefore, I reach the conclusion that those who wear watches are either elitists or sadists. Maybe I'm looking too far into it...maybe they've just always wanted to be math teachers, but were never able to get their teaching degrees.