Clocks

6:34 a.m.
“Steph, are you going to get in the shower?” Laura asks me again. The alarm went off only four minutes ago. Give me a goddamn minute. All I say is, “I’m not sure.” As I weigh the option of not going to class. I really need more sleep. Since she doesn’t have a car and mine is a stick, I know there is no chance of me not having to drive her across town to the University. So I roll over and pick up my phone. Its 6:34. I’m supposed to be waking up but my eyes just won’t seem to open enough. They are dry and sticky. This is probably because she and her sorority sister had me up until almost one. I really need to get more sleep.

6:36 a.m.
“I have a clock we can put in the living room. It’s not very pretty, but it tells time, you know?” Laura is sitting next to me in the bed. I wonder why she would rather sleep in my bed, when I have a perfectly comfortable guest bed in the other room. Maybe she’s scared of my apartment. That can’t work out, she’s about to move into that guest bedroom so she’s going to have to get used to it. But no, she’s sitting next to me rubbing her eyes. If I hadn’t known her since fourth grade (and known that she was just engaged) I might have been more uptight about her sleeping in my bed. However, as I am sure she is completely straight, there is no problem. I grunt in response to her question. At the same time, a completely unnecessary feeling of agitation arises at the thought of her putting a clock on the wall. It isn’t because I feel like she is trying to take over the place; I like the idea of her decorating with me. It isn’t because she and I have different tastes and I don’t like her stuff, we actually are very similar in style and preferences. It therefore has to be a problem with the idea of a clock. But clocks are everywhere, and I’ve never had a problem with a clock being on the wall. I try to think back to the last time I had a clock on the wall. Not at University Village, the apartments I lived in during my first two years at college. No clocks decorated my mother’s house, at least not until after I moved out. My grandparents’ houses didn’t have them either. This seemed strange to me, but at the same time symbolic. The only clock I ever remember on a family member’s wall was my Aunt Melissa. We all knew she was the uptight, hurried one. Always on the go, Ben Franklin would have admired her commitment to his phrase “Time is money.”

6:40 a.m.
“Good Morning America. Today we stand proud to be in the USA SO let everyone know how strong of AMERICANS we are. WE THE USA ARE FIGHTERS ON THIS 9/11” My phone blasts my Avril Lavigne “Girlfriend” ringtone to tell me about this text message. When I read it I do not feel pride. I am angry that he sent this to me at Just-Past-Dawn in the morning. I am not a morning person. I used to be a great morning person, the type who’s eyes flew open the moment (if not before) the alarm went off and was out of bed and had it made less than a minute later. Early to every class, on time to work, and the life of the party until three a.m., I could pass out and be up again the next six-thirty and do it again. I hear sleep deprivation can wear you down. Well, apparently sixteen years of insomnia and power naps is finally taking a toll. I’m no longer a morning person.

6:52 a.m.
I finally get out of bed. I walk into the living room and watch Laura shuffling through her duffel bag for clean clothes to wear. As she selects a pair of faded jeans I go into the kitchen and flick on the coffee machine. Instantly I hear the gurgle of the water shooting up the tube and six seconds later a rich brown liquid begins to pour into the pot. The smell of coffee enters my brain, and I’m suddenly more awake. The familiar smell from every summer morning growing up makes me nostalgic to an almost painful extent. I miss being six years old, adding sugar by the spoonful until my grandmother made me stop and ushered me to the breakfast table where a hot toasted egg-ham-and-cheese sandwich waited. My six-year-old self would pick up the tiny triangles (she cut it into four diagonally) of the sandwich and dip them in the coffee, savoring each taste of it as if I wouldn’t have the same thing for breakfast again the next day. I also think of airports, traveling across country with family every summer from twelve to eighteen. The smell of the coffee also makes me think of hotels breakfasts and Denny’s restaurants. It smells so good. Thank God I remembered last night to set it up. When I’m awake it only takes forty-three seconds to fill the pot, dump it in the back, and scoop two tablespoons of coffee into the filter. When I’m sleepy it takes nearly two minutes. I head to the bathroom still thinking about clocks. I don’t think I like clocks after all. I can’t guess why, I always watch them in classes that bore me. Like government. The clock in my government class has to be in the book of world records for managing to take one normal second and make it last the equivalent of ten science-class-seconds.

6:59 a.m.
“We should get a little clock for the vanity area too,” Laura says around her toothbrush. The comb in my hair continues to brush through the non-existent tangles. I don’t know why I even brush my hair. I could come out of a blizzard and run my fingers through it for a minute to have it back to normal. Normal, that’s why I do it. It’s normal. But clocks are normal too, and I obviously have some deep-seeded bias against them. I brush my hair all the time. More than most people definitely. I give this tendency all the credit for the fact that my hair grows an inch each month. But I blame this tendency for all the split ends. I counted seventeen in one lock last week. I have to get my hair trimmed when I have time. Laura was continuing about the clocks again. “I don’t know if you ever saw the clock in my bathroom at Robert’s, but one of these days I’ll have to take you over and show it to you.”
“I saw it, it was small and blue and plastic, so it could get wet. Played AM/FM radio”
“Yeah, wow you remember. Hey, what time is it?”
“I’d guess about seven o’clock.” I look at my phone. “6:59.”

7:12 a.m.
“We should be leaving soon.” Laura says while she eats the toast I made for breakfast. I make no motion other than to pick up my thermos of coffee and take a long swig. I look at her and nod when I’m done, but I reach for the fridge. I pull out lettuce, my home-made salad dressing, a bag of carrots, a yogurt, and a granny smith apple. I walk to the cupboard and pull out a Tupperware bowl. In the drawer directly below that cabinet I grab a lid. Laura drinks her own cup of French Vanilla coffee as she watches me at work. Wash the lettuce and carrots. Rip it apart and put it in the bowl. Toss in carrots. I pour way too much dressing in, so I add more lettuce and place the lid on top. For good measure, and cause it feels like the right thing to do, I shake the meal up. I take out some cold turnkey meat and break it into chunks in the bowl. Shake again. I can’t resist and I take a bite, the olive oil-lemon-salt-and-pepper dressing is the best I’ve ever tasted. Yeah, I need a better name for it. I’ll think of one someday. Right now we have to leave.

7:34 a.m.
I change the song as soon as I turn the car on. I don’t feel like soft rock today. Let’s try a hip-hop station. No, how about country? Nothing there either. I put on a CD, but they are all overplayed to me at this point. I turn the radio back on and finally find a song that feels right. We pull out of the driveway, my lunch and books and Laura’s backpack in the backseat. I silently pray that nothing falls over and spills, and as we merge onto the 180 I realize that I forgot my coffee on the counter. Oh well, I had drank most of it anyway. At least we’ll be on time to class. Why I signed up for an eight a.m. Anthropology course I’ll never understand. It’s got to be the stupidest thing I’ve personally ever done. The phone rings and I answer it, knowing before I look who it is.
“Hey Grandma.”
“Hey whatcha doin?” She asks in the exact same way she does every morning when she calls me or I call her. She’s eating. Suddenly I think of those delicious sandwiches again.
“Driving on the freeway. Did you have an egg-ham-and-cheese sandwich today?” this is a fair question. While she made them whenever I wanted them, it was not an everyday thing for her now.
“I’m eating it right now.” She says in a ‘where are the hidden cameras’ kind of way. She’s a little paranoid. My pseudo-psychic moments are always unnerving to her. “How did you know?”
“Just a guess. I thought about them earlier. Hey I have a question.”
“What?”
“When is the last time you had a clock on your wall?”