Thinking Out Loud
By
Gerard Meister
I'll admit that there's a bit of "Archie Bunker" in me. Still, I've managed to keep up to date with most things, although I must admit my 1954 Pontiac - long since gone - was the best car ever made, bar none.
And, as some of my reader's might remember, in my quest for being "with it," I recently succumbed to the lure of a cellular phone. Unashamedly and quite frankly, now that my wife and I can stay in touch with the entire planet 24/7, we don't know how we ever lived without it. It was in that mode that for our 51st anniversary on June 7th my better half and I decided to get each other one of those new-fangled watches. You know, the ones that do everything! So off we went to the watch store.
When we explained to the clerk behind the counter what we were looking for, he could barely contain his glee. "I got a couple of numbers here that'll knock your socks off!" he shouted at us, as he placed a handful of watches on the counter. "I'm talking date, time, chronograph, split lap timer and a two-zone alarm system with an hourly chime!"
My wife, who is very practical - she was a math major in college - asked what the heck is a "split lap timer?"
"Good question," the clerk frothed. "Say you're both running in a marathon, and you want ………."
"That's enough," I broke in, "we have some other shopping to do and I don't want to run out of time."
He didn't laugh at my quip, but did suggest that we buy two different makes with identical features, both the same price: $10.99 each, plus tax. Cheap enough I said as I gave him my credit card and ducked away. All was well and good; we really loved the timepieces, until daylight saving time ended. And therein friends was the rub: we studied the instruction brochures with the intensity of a rabbi perusing the torah, but needless to say, could not figure out how to set the watches back an hour.
Now before you make fun of our intellectual/mechanical disability, please check out Figures A & B, The Manuals:
Note that A, is text only and though the word count is somewhat fewer than, say, the first twenty-seven chapters of Tolstoy's War and Peace, it doesn't miss that mark by much; and setting any function, even one as basic as time and date, is an eight step procedure demanding the digital dexterity of an accomplished safe cracker.
But it is B, which intrigues me. Just to set the watch, the techies had to come up with a brochure with nearly as many illustrations (143 to be exact!) as an early Sears Roebuck Catalogue.
Taken together A & B are about as long as the Book of Genesis! That God was able to explain how he/she set the whole world in motion in the same amount of reading time I would need to set my watch really got my goat, so off I stormed to the watch store.
"Easy job," the clerk said, as he reset both watches in a thrice. "And as long as you're here, do you guys need some help with the split lap timer?" he asked, before handing back the instruments.
"Thanks, not at this time," I said. "But if we decide to run in the Boston Marathon, you'll be the first to know!"
Below: Figures A and B
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