Free The Fran Lebowitz Reader by Fran Lebowitz Page B

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indisposed
in a sentence. My childhood was not, however, quite the gay whirl that one might imagine from the above statements. As a whistler I was only fair and I am to this very day unable to assume even a humane attitude in regard to gerbils. But then as now, I was always capable of dealing with the larger issues—it was, and is, the little things that get me down.
    I did not learn how to tell time until I was nine years old. This is an unusually advanced age at which to master the art, except perhaps in Southern California.
    My parents were understandably upset about my inability to tell time, for they possessed the foresight to realize that any child who talked back with such verve and snap would one day need a lawyer who charged by the hour. Furthermore, their infinite wisdom told them that it was exceedingly unlikely that the bill would arrive reading: Consultation on contract with agent,$150.00. One and one-half hours. From big hand on twelve, little hand on three, to little hand on four, big hand on six.
    Their concern for my future well-being drove them to frantic efforts in an attempt to instill in me the knowledge that so painfully eluded my grasp. Night after night I sat at the kitchen table and surveyed a bewildering array of clocks made from oatmeal cookies, peanut butter lids, and crayoned circles of colored paper. They spelled each other—first one parent and then the other—taking turns on watch, so to speak. They were diligent, patient, and kind and I nodded my head and looked alert, all the while seething with fury at the injustices of a world in which we didn’t have Christmas but we did have Time. As the days wore on and my ignorance persisted, my parents toyed with the idea of renting me out as a parlor game or at least trading me in for a child who couldn’t learn something else—so weary were they of round, flattish objects.
    Outside intervention came in the form of an offer of help from my aunt to take me on for the week of my winter vacation. I was duly dispatched to Poughkeepsie, where I was alternately bribed with banana milk shakes and tortured with clocks devised from paper plates, circular throw pillows, and overturned frying pans. At the end of the week I was returned to my parents a thing that was once a child—as ever unable to tell time and newly addicted to banana milk shakes in a household that considered blenders frivolous.
    Some months later I was taking a bath when I suddenly shouted “Eureka!” and at long last such concepts as twenty of eight and ten after twelve were touched with meaning.
    It should be readily apparent to all that under no circumstances will I ever consider yielding the need for such hard-won knowledge. That there does indeed exist the very real danger of such a possibility is entirely dueto the invention of the digital clock. I spent the best years of my life learning to tell time and I’m not stopping now. Neither should you. Here’s why:
Regular clocks tell real time. Real time is time such as half-past seven.
Digital clocks tell fake time. Fake time is time such a nine-seventeen.
Nine-seventeen is fake time because the only people who ever have to know that it’s nine-seventeen are men who drive subway trains.
I am not a man who drives a subway train.
You are not a man who drives a subway train.
I can tell this without even seeing you because anyone who has to know that it’s nine-seventeen cannot possibly risk looking away.
Real watch faces are in the shape of watch faces because they must accommodate all of the things that make up a real watch, such as numbers, hands, and little minute lines.
Digital watch faces are in the shape of watch faces for no apparent reason. This cannot help but have an unsettling effect upon the young.
    Now that I have set the record straight on the matter of Time I should like to direct your attention briefly to another unacceptable invention:
Pocket Calculators: It Took Me Three Years to Learn How to Do Long