Michael D. Davis.

Time is a construct. Time is a fallacy. Time is an idea created by man and put into practice so that you’d show up 20 minutes early to your doctor’s appointment and wait in an uncomfortable chair next to an old lady with a death-rattle cough. Einstein said, “Time is relative,” and there is no other place in the world where that statement is more true than in my house.

Everyone nowadays has a phone in their pocket with the same time on it. This is because the US Naval Observatory operates approximately a hundred atomic clocks which sends their times to France to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. The French then calculate times from all over the world to create the Universal Time Scale. They then make sure every atomic clock is accurate. Colorado then beams the correct time up to satellites in outer space, which then shoots it back down via cell towers to the phone in your back pocket. However, I didn’t grow up looking at a cell phone for the time, and neither did anyone else in my house. So, we rely on good old-fashioned set-the-time-yourself clocks, which is why I’m here.

There are roughly seven functioning clocks in the house. Two in the living room, one in the bathroom, three in the kitchen, including the microwave and oven, and one in the Old One’s bunker. To write this article, I ran around the house, writing down the different times from every clock. When I did this test, the accurate time was 4:27. The other clocks read as follows.

Living Room A: 4:24

Living Room B: 4:19

Bathroom:4:33

Kitchen Clock: 4:28

Microwave: 4:36

Oven: 4:35

Old One’s Bunker: 3:28

No clock’s time was correct. The closest was a single minute off; the worst was 59 minutes off. The clock I labeled Living Room B was eight minutes behind. This clock, I bought several years ago, along with the time, it tells the date, temperature, and the day of the week. It hasn’t been accurate since year one. The first year, everything was fine. Then slowly it just kept losing minutes, no matter how many times I reset it. This is the main clock I look at in the house, and to know the correct time I have to add eight minutes to whatever it says. The thing is I’d rather continue to do this than entertain the prospect of buying a new clock.

Living Room B, however, is the only clock with a malfunction. Every other clock on my list was purposefully, or ignorantly set to that specific time, which I believe makes this whole thing much worse. The bathroom clock is set forward by six minutes, purposefully by my sister so that when she’s brushing her teeth in the morning she won’t be late for work. The microwave is set forward nine minutes assumingly for the same reasons for when she’s making her morning pop tart or who knows. The Old One’s clock is set ahead 59 minutes also for this reason I assume, so he can be up early for his day of retirement, or it simply hasn’t been changed since Day Light Savings Time.

Regardless, it’s ridiculous. Finding the correct time in the house is a near-constant struggle. You have to look at the clock, remember the equation for the room, and do math in your head for the right time. Living Room B + 8 minutes = correct time. Bathroom – 6 minutes = correct time. The Old One’s clock + 59 minutes = correct time. It’s a horror.

Depending on where you go in the house, and what clocks you look at, you can cross the house and time travel 17 minutes into the future. Or go a whole hour and eight minutes into the past. You can stand in one spot in the living room and turn left to travel five minutes into the future and turn right to travel five minutes into the past. I don’t need a souped-up DeLorean, in my house I can travel through time with a swivel of my head.

Seven clocks, with seven different times. It’s annoying, but where else in the world can you time travel to the fridge and back?