Sands of Time

Time is short. Opportunity is limited. Such is the wisdom of the hourglass.

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An hourglass sits on the table next to my morning coffee. It has no real function except to jump-start my mental focus until the coffee takes hold of the morning. In a speechless way, it’s superior to listening to politicians spewing vitriolic voodoo on marginalized Americans.

Today I recall words from MacDonald Carey, “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of our Life.” They’re the prologue of the TV episodes, Days of our Lives, which ran from 1966 to 1994. Miraculously, there’s still sand left in its hourglass. If you remember it, then your hourglass is running low on sand, too.

My mother never missed an episode of this soap opera on her 12-inch black and white TV. She’d sit with her cup of coffee or tea and allow herself to be subsumed into the lives of the actors. If you lived in a small South Georgia nowhere town, you’d find your own escape hatch from the insipid boredom of the place. Soaps are better addictions than alcohol, except at night.

Someone gave me this useless glass filled with sand. They said it provided a better meditative process than the yogic Oom’s. Plus, they said, it wouldn’t disturb the household while sitting on the floor in lotus position, clothed in a white Indian loincloth and making a fool of myself.

For portending the future, the hourglass is inferior to tarot cards, horoscopes or even fortune cookies. I once cracked open a fortune cookie in the Grand China Wall restaurant after consuming a MSG-marinated General Tso’s chicken. Bad days need clear direction. The tiny fortune inside simply read, “See Rock City.” Direction can come serendipitously from strange sources.

Today, the hourglass seems like a bad omen. I sit and watch as sands of time slip silently into the bowels of the hourglass. The sand leaves no trail but slides seamlessly through the narrow neck, settling itself into nothingness. Like time itself, it leaves no trail in its passing.

Unlike Sullivan’s theorem, ‘form follows function,’ it’s hard to say just what function an hourglass performs. It’s useless as a sand clock, unless one subscribes to the notion that it’s one of Plato’s Perfect Patterns. Never heard of his postulation?

The peripatetic philosopher’s hypothesis suggests that in the heavenly spheres there’s a perfect pattern of all things, of which on earth everything’s an imperfect replica. It’s hard to get a grip on esoterica. Plato obviously never observed Ole Miss cheer leaders, or he would have seen the flaws in his speculation. Perfection is clearly in the eye of the beholder.

There are some trivial uses of the hourglass. I once had a small but decorative one, a ten-minute timer. The glass was encased in brass. It substituted for a stopwatch for timing long-winded, charge-by-the-word lawyers and boring preachers lecturing on the wages of sin.

Some say the hourglass is helpful for redeeming the time, an unproven and half-baked concept. Whistling Dixie does a better job. And if you think resurrection is possible in this body, remember, Cryonics is still a work in progress. I doubt we’ll see Stalin or Mao rise from their glass encasements any time soon.

I feel some remorse for the hourglass. It’s become mostly irrelevant in this technological age. It’s still good for timing 3-minute eggs. It was formerly good for describing the bodily shapes of peoples. But alas, even this use has run its course. American physiques are now mostly best described by the shape of fruit, particularly pears.

Perhaps the best use for the hourglass is in setting the mood for some figurative or poetic metaphor. Unfortunately, the sand has run out on writing this moronic post. Dream up your own.

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In the cosmic scheme of things, Time, if it exists at all, is measured by eons and not by grains of sand. As for us, well, it’s still dust unto dust…and it’s always later than we think.


Bud Hearn
October 18, 2018

On the Habits of Men

It’s an idea whose time has come. But who has nerve to write it? Clearly, only someone with a reputation of questionable repute. Some men will sink low to rise high.

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It begins a few weeks ago as a tongue-in-cheek dialogue with my newspaper editor. Journalism requires balance. I learned this from the online Taught by Trump method. She puts both her job and the fortunes of her fish-wrapper newspaper on the line by accepting this scalding topic. Here’s how the conversation goes.

I suggest the title. She laughs hysterically at such absurdity. I tell her it could be her breakthrough, a career maker for her. She laughs even harder. She knows hacks when she hears one.

“Who could possibly be offended?” I ask.

She stops laughing. I seize the opportunity to slide in the obvious, “Certainly not women. They’ve endured men’s foul habits for ages. Besides, men don’t read. They prefer photographs.”

She asks about credible research material and copious annotations. I sidestep the questions. No writer reveals their sources. I want to tell her I studied the characteristics of mules for similarities, but she’s in no mood for levity, despite the significant parallels.

She pushes the issue. I demur. She’s relentless. I capitulate. “Friends in low places,” I tell her. “But I’m not naming names.” Autobiographical data needs disguising. She wants more information.

“I need examples of this cockamamie thesis,” she murmurs. “In my experience men’s traits fit into four distinct categories: Ignorance, Stupidity, Annoying and Disgusting. Which category is your basis?” Her assessment is harsh, true as it may be.

I admit men do have their idiosyncrasies. Eyesight for one. I tell her of this guy who never saw his birthday present--a grand piano--sitting in his living room. His wife had to point it out. “Typical, but boring,” she says.

I dig deeper into the data bag, pull out the one where men are like little boys who often pout in attempt to justify their infantile actions. Her ears perk up. “Specifics,” she demands.

“Simple. Men always have important meetings. Making up beds is not one.” She wants me to define ‘important.’ “Does coffee at Starbucks count?” She’s not amused.

“Here’re a couple for you,” I say. “What man doesn’t have the primal ‘fear of dishwasher-unloading’? Or, shading the truth of their whereabouts? Significant hyperbole hides in these rituals”

“Go on, I’m listening,” she says with resignation.

I sling her a zinger about a fellow who has the bed-time habits of a barbarian. I hit a nerve. Cave men content sells publications. “Explain,” she says.

I set the scene. “His wife’s asleep, right? He comes in, fluffs the feathers of three pillows and bounces onto the bed. The mattress becomes a catapult. His sleeping spouse goes airborne.”

Finally she smiles. “I want to meet this savage,” she says. “Anyone as stupid as this is a cover story. But I need more.”

“Easy,” I say. “I’ll bet even your father never read an expiration date on foods, and ate Ben and Jerry’s out of the container. He probably even drank orange juice right from the bottle, correct?” I explain it’s a covert male nocturnal proclivity. I leave out the part where they never bother to wipe off the lid.

“Gross,” she says, “a disgusting trait.”

“You want more?” I ask. “I’m just getting wound up.”

She pushes back in her chair. “OK, I’m intrigued, but what’s the article’s hidden theme?” I’m trapped. With editors, intuition is a finely-tuned antenna.

I come clean. “OK, it’s a ruse. The surreptitious theme is that women have concocted a vast, feminist conspiracy to discredit men. They’ve set men up for failure.”

“Ludicrous,” she says.

I say, “They ask questions, like, do you like my new haircut? Or, do I look frumpy in this new dress? There are no right answers to these questions. Do you agree?”

“No comment,” she says, grinning.

“Otherwise, then what do you think about the article?” I ask.

She pauses. After a long moment of silence she resurrects an Abe Lincoln quote, “Your thesis is about as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death.”

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Alas, gentlemen, it’s sad but true…women still rule in the affairs of men. A future Weakly Post might include a subjugated man’s recipe for shadow-of-pigeon soup.


Bud Hearn
October 11, 2018

Getting Your Own Switch

“The loneliest walk of your life—to get your own switch.” Richard Pryor

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I suppose relating to such a quote would depend on where and when one spent their youth. Perhaps it would apply mostly to little boys running around in their short pants, creating mischief with less brain power than a gnat. Now they’re wearing long pants with little change in the cognitive cortex.

We’re living in an era of where trauma of the past is being recalled and exposed publicly. I’m joining the #MeToo movement and exposing a lingering ordeal of my own. I need relief, too.

So here it is, my mea culpa: I admit to having been sent to retrieve my own switch for high crimes and tantrums committed in my youth. There, now…out and public. Free at last. Funny how relief follows confession, huh?

In my home, punishments were meted out according to the severity of the infraction. The House Ways and Means Committee was the ruling tribunal. It consisted of two members, my mother and father. In that order. Judge, jury and executioner

The administering of the remuneration for the transgression was decided by the severity of the delinquency…and the means was either a switch or a belt. I remember both. So do my legs. Flesh has vivid memories of some things.

Not to cast dispersion on anyone’s recollections, every detail of trauma is impossible to recall. Evidence fades faster than a morning fog, and verbal credibility, even with tears, is suspect. Simply ‘believing’ won’t get it.

But I can remember the first time I had to go choose my switch. It was a long walk in the back yard looking for a weapon of mass annihilation adequate for my penalty.

Seen today, the violation was minor. I just shoved my brother down for no good reason except out of pure meanness. Meanness is inbred in boys. Switches are preparatory means of driving the demon far from them.

In my case, Sunday School failed in the finer points of drilling the concept of ‘brotherly love’ into my head at the age of seven. The ‘he said, he said’ cross-examinations provided no credible or empirical evidence for a balanced view. The decision for the crime was based solely on size, and I was the biggest. Guilty as charged.

So, mama grabs me by the arm while I dance wildly, a futile attempt to avoid the sting of the switch. My little brother smirks, gloats and sticks his tongue out. My eyes lacerate him. “You’ll get yours,” they say. Afterwards I pout and slink off to assuage the humiliation. Mama’s lemonade later reconciles the disgrace. Ordeal over, life moves on.

Now the House Ways and Means Committee’s methods of reparations followed the legal theory that punishment is meted out to fit the crime. The Means escalates with age as boy’s brains mature to that of a fly.

At a certain age boys no longer learn from switches and belts. It takes something more substantial to get their attention. Like large, 2” x 4” wooden paddles with holes bored into them for effect. High school principals didn’t ask for evidence, or care who was at fault…everybody bent over the desk and received adequate recompense of reward for their transgressions.

In time parents soon run out of options, left with only the denial of perks for reparations, horrible things like denying use of the car for nocturnal visits with girls to the drive-in theater. Which borders on a virtual death sentence to teenage boys. I still see my father now, standing in the door, dangling the car keys and grinning. Such torture qualities for cruel and unusual punishment.

Meanwhile, Life keeps writing new rules, collecting its tolls, handing out its citations and exacting its fines for infractions small and large. All equations are reconciled, sooner or later. Optics, perceptions, facts and all equivocations fall into proper place, and social equilibrium is achieved whether we like its resolution or not. Keep your cash, buying Indulgences won’t provide absolution.

When it’s all said and done, Life is gonna make the ultimate decision on the outcome of everything. There’ll be no rebuttals about evidence for the final judgment. Because the Great Tribunal has the last say.

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Getting our own switch was once traumatic. It will seem like child’s play when the final verdict is rendered. After all, a switch in time saves nine.