What Time is This?

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? Does Anybody Really Care?
- from a good song by one of my hometown groups, Chicago. Oh, how I loved the trumpet section...back in the days when I played coronet.

This is dad's watch. It's set to London time. He bought it on the streets of New York almost ten years ago. He said he'd never replaced the battery. Go figure.

He left the watch on his nightstand when he went to hospital the last time. I carried it home in the chest pocket of my jacket. I forgot it was there for a couple of weeks until I put it on one Saturday.

What is time? A marker, like a road sign? No...too static. A noun? It's very active...time is too short. Or too slow. Or too long. Time flies. Time passes. Time idles. What is time? We always want more of it...can never find enough of it...wonder where it went....

Allen and I must have bought dad a few watches in his lifetime. But this was the one that stuck. This sidewalk bought, $5 Casio with the battery that has never stopped. Nothing personal. Not a gift. No meaning. No intent. But it's the one that stuck. And it's still going.

"Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking...into the future"