Time: Part I

By Al Horn

Time. A subject that touches us all. As a reader and writer of Science Fiction, I view time from different perspectives. I'm sure most people can relate to the experiences I am about to convey. I will simply categorize them as the classic no-win, no-win situations.

For my daily bread-winning job, I get up and leave very early in the morning. I start work at six o'clock. Normally, I arrive well before my start time. Recently I had a need to stop and buy a few items at an all-night grocery store. I left ten minutes early. Considering the store is just off the interstate and on the way to work that should have been sufficient. I entered the store and immediately found the brand of cheese I wanted. As an afterthought, I decided to pick up a cheese slicer as well. A glance at my watch told me I was making good time.This store had a wall rack, twelve feet long, filled with all the kitchen gadgets you could ever hope to own. Well, almost everything. They carried not one cheese slicer. They had four different varieties of bag clips. There were at least one dozen spatulas of various shapes and compositions. No cheese slicer.

I went back to the dairy section, hoping to find one hanging on a side rack. No such luck. The nearest stockperson directed me back to the original rack. A second investigation turned up nothing. I headed for the checkout to find a line at the only register open. The clock over the door told me my margin for safety was slipping away. A quick count of what the customers ahead of me were purchasing encouraged me to stay. Things moved well until the person in front of me was ready to pay. They wanted to break a fifty-dollar bill. This meant the clerk had to run over to the service counter for change. To her credit, she did run. That was the only reason I waited. I paid for my cheese with a tense smile on my face and rushed out to my truck.

The person with the fifty-dollar bill had back their car out into the lane behind my vehicle. Apparently, the engine had died and they were having trouble getting it restarted. As luck would have it, the only other cars on the lot were wedge around my truck. I was trapped. Peering at the time on my radio, I told myself, 'chivalry be damned', and got out of my truck to offer pushing their car out of the way. As my door shut behind me, the engine fired and away they sped. I returned to my truck, put it in gear, and started to back out just to discover two people had stopped to talk not ten feet behind me. I slowly inched in their direction to let them see me coming. One of them took advantage of my backup lights to write something down on a piece of paper. I couldn't have been more that a foot from them when they glanced in my direction, gave me a dirty look, and then moved begrudgingly out of my way.

From that point, I traveled on six different roads and broke the speed limits on each and every one of them. My watch, being set a few minutes fast, chimed as I pulled into the parking lot. I swiped my badge just seconds before my start time. That was when it dawned on me. In my rush, I forgot to pick up a newspaper. It was probably just as well. I wouldn't have had time to read it.