Every evening, usually at the dinner table, Cowgrit asks me to tell her about my day. Half the reason she asks is so our boys get used to the routine so they’ll answer the question when they get older. We already ask Calfgrit7 this question each day after school, and when I get home from work, Calfgrit3 tells Cowgrit, “Tell Dad about our day.”

When Cowgrit asks me, I try to give a thorough answer, to be a good example. But really, when I leave work, I like to leave work. I don’t like to dwell on what I’ve done that day. It’s not that I have bad days, or anything like that, but my days aren’t particularly exciting. In fact, my days tend to be rather boring. Such is the life of an editor of manuals and technical documents.

What she never asks, but I really wish she would ask, is how my game night went. Especially after a night when we played Dungeons & Dragons. I’d love to tell about how we fought a dragon, raided a goblin warren, found ancient, glittering treasure, and saved a princess. I’d love to explain how we solved the puzzle to open the secret door that leads down to an even darker part of the dungeon, and how we fell prey to a diabolical trap. But sadly, my game night adventures are left to game nights and the occasional email exchanges with my gaming buddies.

Nobody wants to hear a geek yabber about his 6th-level war-priest and his holy hammer.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Prepare for a long hike, then go outside at exactly noon. Check that the sun is directly over head, and check that your watch says 12:00. Now, walk east or west. You don’t have to be in a rush. In fact, take your time.

Now, say it takes you a year to walk from Virginia to Illinois. At the end of that year, your watch and the sun will not be in sync. When the sun is directly over head, like when you started your trip at noon, your watch now says 11:00a.m.

Say it takes you another year to reach Colorado, and then another year to reach California. When the sun is directly over your head in California, your watch would say 9:00 a.m. This seems like standard time zone knowledge, but really, it isn’t.

If every day of your year-long walk, you looked up at the noon sun, when did your watch start being wrong? It wouldn’t suddenly jump when you crossed the invisible time zone “border.” It would slowly happen over all the 365 days. One day your watch and the sun would be one minute apart, then another day two minutes apart, then eventually 60 minutes apart, then 61 minutes, then 120 minutes, and so on. But at no point during the long walk would you feel the difference in time. It’s not like a plane flight where you go from one time zone to another quickly.

You look up at the sun one day, and then 24 hours later you look up at it again. Do this many times and eventually there’s a difference — but 24 hours is 24 hours, yes? If you judge the 24 hours by the sun reaching noon, your watch must have changed. If you judge the 24 hours by your watch, the sun’s pattern must have changed? At no one point during the long walk did the “flow of time” seem to change, but yet you have hard evidence that it did change.

I fully understand the physics and mathematics of the situation. But the reality of a watch and the sun falling out of sync for showing 24 hours twists my little brain in a way I can’t grasp. This has never bothered me when I’ve flown across the country, in either direction, but thinking about the long walk change just flabbergasts me.

Maybe I’m just too simple. Or maybe . . . oh, look, something shiny.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Cowgrit loves craigslist.com. We’ll have an old piece of furniture or something to get rid of, and instead of me having to take it to Goodwill or the dump, Cowgrit will put it on craigslist and actually find someone who’ll come get it and give us cash for the privilege. It only takes a couple days, and poof, whatever it is is gone and out of our way.

We had an old bedside table from our boys’ room that no longer fit or matched their other furniture. The table sat in my office for several months — it was out of the way, and out of mind. But Cowgrit eventually got around to listing it on craigslist. It sold within 48 hours. The guy came and picked it up and gave Cowgrit money. Wonderful.

But Calfgrit7 was unhappy with that transaction. He “loved” that table, he said. Never mind that it was shoved in a corner of my office for months, and he had never said anything about in all that time (or before). He was upset that Cowgrit sold it.

Later, Cowgrit found a piece of notebook paper with the words, “For Sale” written big, lying on our bedroom dresser. CG7 had decided to, in turn, sell her “favorite furniture.” Fortunately he doesn’t know how to list anything on craigslist.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I was 18  or 19 years old, driving home in the dark evening. I came to an intersection in town where I needed to turn left. Across the intersection, facing my direction, was a car that apparently was going to go straight across, past me on my left. On the left side of the intersection was another car that apparently was going to go straight across from my left to my right. We were all stopped, waiting for for our lights to turn green.

When my light turned green (solid green, not a left arrow), I pulled out a bit and waited for the car across the intersection to go past. I waited for several seconds, plenty of time for the car to start. But the other car just sat there. I thought, Well maybe he has a red light, and I can go.

After I felt like I had waited more than half the light cycle, I went. I moved fully into the intersection and turned left. It was in the middle of my turn that the car across from me decided to move. (I don’t know if he just wasn’t paying attention and didn’t notice his light was green before, or what.) The car started off and then slammed on his breaks to keep from hitting me. What melodrama, I thought. What an idiot.

It was then, as I passed, I noticed that the car that had been on the left side of the intersection was a town cop. He made the mistake of turning on his lights prematurely. He was facing the opposite direction and would have to pull into the intersection to turn around. Some strange, wild idea came over me: I could escape while he turned around. I could see him in my rear-view mirror trying to make a three-point turn. That would take him several seconds.

This intersection was on the edge of downtown, and there were plenty of criss-crossing streets for me to cut down. I immediately turned down one street. I sped down a ways, then turned onto another street, then onto another. I quickly found a street with several cars parked on it, and I zipped in between a couple. I turned out the lights, cut off the car, slid down in my seat, and listened to the siren approaching.

Peering just over the door lock, I saw the flashing lights and heard the siren pass down a street one block over. I waited about five minutes before moving. Then I started my car, turned on my lights, and continued my journey home.

I was rather surprised at myself, not only for pulling off that evasion, but that I had even tried it. I can’t believe that I even had the thought go through my head. I’m not that kind of guy, even as a teenager. I could have gotten in serious trouble for that action.

But I was mad at the guy in the car across the intersection from me for just sitting there and not moving when he had a green light and I was waiting to turn. I felt like he did something stupid, but I was going to pay the price for it. I was not impatient, I was not being reckless, or anything like that. I was trying to follow the rules, but his mistake made me make a mistake, and when the cop turned on his lights, the combination of anger and fear prodded me into taking a major, and unadvised, risk.

But, I came out of it alive, without a ticket (or an arrest), and with a funny story to tell. My boys better never pull a stunt like that when they drive.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com