Watch Me

My son has always - since birth - attempted to live life in a more structured environment than this planet provides. The tenuous-ness of his immediate surroundings are just not enough assurance for him. The laws of nature might be the only gauge that he can truly rely on. This said, 'Time' is his friend.

He learned to tell time at a very young age - around four. It wasn't difficult at all to teach him this abstract concept that most kids struggle with well into their third and fourth grade years at elementary school. I simply explained how a clock worked and what the increments around the dial represented. It instantly made sense to him. Jackson 'got it' before he started kindergarten.

He like time because it moves at a steady pace - regardless of what's going on - never slowing or quickening to accommodate anything. It's reliable and predictable.Two things that are very important to my son. And two things that he has enormous respect for. The fact that others don't or can't simply confuses him. As well, he can monitor it's progress by the simple act of wearing a watch. He monitors everything!
Because he loves time, he loves clocks. All types of clocks. Our home is filled with clocks of every sort as well as those that no longer work because he played with them. He doesn't have the heart to throw them away. He has clocks that chime, clocks that play tunes, Cuckoo clocks, Glockenspeil-type clocks, digital clocks, analog clocks, battery operated clocks, electric clocks. The clocks that irritate him the most are those that have second hands that 'jump' from one second to the next instead of passing around the dial in a continuous sweep of motion because time doesn't 'jump', it's an effortless and continuous motion. He wants the clocks to represent it accurately  - like it really is. Some clocks require that he wind them which is somehow okay - it gives him something to monitor. As well, there's a drawer full of watches for when he's not at home with his clocks. His clocks are as much a part of him as his red hair. He never takes off his watch and he always wants a new one.

When he was very little (age three or four), as a way of introducing himself to people, he would walk up to a person and grab his or her wrist (if they had a watch on) and check their time setting to make sure that it was accurate. If it wasn't, he would immediately point out the adjustment necessary.
I remember one occasion when he did this in particular. He was going to afternoon kindergarten class. We had just walked to his school and we were waiting outside for the teachers to unlock the doors. As was usual, there were other Mom's waiting with their children. Jackson grabbed a woman's wrist and told her that her watch was five minutes fast. She attempted to explain that she had set it that way on purpose. Of course, my son asked. "Why"? The woman explained that she set her watch fast because she was always five minutes late and was trying to figure out a way to be late less consistently - in other words, she was trying to fool herself into believing the time was later than it actually was.

My five year old son, in all his wisdom, looked her straight in the eye with an incredulous expression and said, "Why don't you just leave five minutes earlier if you know you're always late?" The woman looked at him and then at me with the same insulted yet epiphany-generated expression. She was speechless for a full two minutes.
Even at the young age of five he understood the boundaries between conditions that could and could not be manipulated. He knew you couldn't change time no matter how much you might like to.
As a result, communication in our house sounds different than it does in the outside world. I cannot reply to a question of his by saying, "In a while" or "in a few minutes." He needs, "at 8:37pm" or "In 7 minutes" because anything less exact might as well be nothing at all for all the good it is meant. Some adults still haven't learned to identify and respect these boundaries. He's right. Subjective answers really don't have any explicit meaning. There is no tangible data in expression like, "a while ago." What does that really mean? he wonders, "How long is 'a while' if it can have more than one definition?" -Smart kid.

Daylight Savings Time is approaching. For Jackson, there is no such thing, because it's just like the woman who tried to fool herself by setting her watch incorrectly - only in this case, the entire population decides to be ridiculous at the same time.
He wants to move to Arizona where he believes people have more sense. The same kind of sense that he has taught me to have - because I have been able to 'watch him' - literally.