Time flies

The first time it happened I was waiting for the bus at the crowded stop. I had been waiting for a little while and my Ipod had run out of juice. I was kind of zoned out, but I recall the bus being a stop light away. I was wondering what the delay had been, when next thing I knew it was zooming past me. I swore at the stupid driver for ignoring us and turned around to complain to the people behind me when I stopped short. There was nobody. How had everyone else been picked up and I hadn't?

The second time I was at work. I'm a TA at the moment and I had a mountain of essays to get through. This is usually a tedious process but today was particularly bad. I had spent what felt like an hour going over one student's incredibly bland and overly verbose essay when I looked up at the time. It had only been five minutes! I know it felt like forever but that was ridiculous.

The third time was when I was at home. I was dying for a cup of tea and set the pot to boil. I sat down to read a novel but occassionaly glanced up to see if the kettle was ready to boil. I must have looked up a dozen times in 15 minutes without the kettle boiling. I checked to make sure it wasn't broken or leaking or soemthing. It was fine so I put it back on the element. The moment I took my hand away it started sto whine. Impossible!

Now I knew something very odd was going on.

"I'll bet you think something very odd is going on," said a voice behind me.

I whirled around and was faced with a man in a very strange getup. It was a silvery one-piece leasure suit, kind of like what you'd see in a cheesey sci-fi movie. He had absolutely no hair, not even eyebrows. His pupils were orange, and his face looked as though it had been carved all out of one mass of flesh. He had a wristband that flashed and sparkled red and blue randomly.

"Who are you?" I sputtered out as I took in the sight of him.

"That is not relevant. You have fallen out of synch with normal time and I have been sent to address the situation," he said in a chirpy, sparrow-like voice.

"What are talking about?"

"This morning at 10:19.32 1/4 you briefly went faster than regular time. As a result, you missed your transit vehicle. When correcting a document at 3:44.45 6/8 it occured again, with you going slower than the regular speed. Boiling water on arrival here at 6:29.12. 2/5 caused both a slowing and quickening withing 2 minutes of each other."

I tried to take this in. It sounded crazy. It was crazy. But today was definitely unusual so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

"So...you're here to correct the problem?"

"Impossible! There is no known cause or treatment for this condition. Only containment."

"You going to try and lock me up?" I said, making a fist. I was suspicious of this nutbag now.

He emitted a sound like a seagull's squawk which after a moment I realized must be laughter.

"We have neither time nor resources!  You are free person! We do not do this!"

"Well, then what are you doing here?"

"You must self-contain. Am here to offer early warning device."

He opened his hand to me. In it was a gaudy looking mood ring. He gestured with his other hand toward it.

"Take! It will warn you. It will flash green if you fall fast and red if you fall slow."

I took the ring and looked at it for a moment, then put it on. It wasn't any weirder than anything else today. The man disappeared the moment I put the ring on and hasn't been back since.

Life since then has been weird and chaotic but at least a little more controllable. It's gotten me to appreciate the regular moments more than I ever did before. So if you ever feel like time is dragging by or zooming past, maybe it really is. Don't be surprised if you get a visit from a silver jump-suited bird-like man.