Dandy in Afghanistan

 So what the heck is with the phrase “The time!  The time!  Who’s got the time?”.  It came from the Disney animated feature “Alice in Wonderland”.  It was the white rabbit who wanted to know the time.  Now, Dandy, crazy silly, can’t figure out how you connect the dots Dandy, what does this have to do with you?

 You’re about to find out.  I left home with a perfectly good functioning wrist watch and when I got to Norfolk, VA., the band broke as I was heaving heavy military issue bags out of the back of a bus.  So I cut my losses and carried the face in my pocket for weeks until I could buy another one.  I went to the BX where all they had were watches the size of Hulk Hogan’s wrist- not going to work on me. 

 Finally, a guy a work with had a big zip lock bag of watches for sell.  So I picked out a really nice “Folex” (you know fake Rolex that’s black market) for twenty smackers  and I loved my Folex.  It was silver and minimally pinched the hair on my arms.  It was a dish of a watch and I couldn’t be happier.  Then one day I went to take a shower and took my watch off to hang on the towel hook, but I got a case of the dropsies and dropped my precious watch.  In slow motion I watched it hit the tile floor and swiftly bent over to save it only to find my Folex had a shattered face.  It wasn’t even slightly cracked- it was shattered to the point that I couldn’t make out the time.  So I chucked in the trash!

 Then I had to go back to my stopwatch without the band, but I couldn’t remember where I left it.  I asked my sweet hubby to buy me another watch and he happily obliged me.  He purchased a watch and put it in the same package as my brand new laptop.  If you know my laptop story, then you know the package never arrived and vanished to the black hole with my watch.

 I finally found my broken watch and life was good for a while.  Then my $10, battery operated alarm clock that I just bought on my journey here stopped waking me up.  I woke up late- not late for work, but late for me about three times in one week.  Feeling a certain amount of anxiety because as you know I hate being late, I made a trip to the BX to buy some new batteries for the old alarm clock and a new alarm clock just in case.  I got my bag of treasures back to my room and set out on a “Wake me the heck up on time” mission when I put the new batteries in my old alarm clock and still the little alarm clock icon wouldn’t turn on.  I moved the switch back and forth with such fury and vigor thinking I could get the stinking thing to cooperate.  No luck!

 Now even more peeved, I tore my new alarm clock out of the package and realized the clock didn’t come with batteries!  I had bought AAA batteries for the old one and the new one required AA.  Imagine that!  At that very point, I had to take a deep breath and just sit there and fight the urge of breaking into hysterics.  Was this really happening to me?  Then I collected myself and realized I had bought AA batteries for my digital camera a couple weeks ago.  Now, where were those batteries?  I had just moved wall lockers and moved all of my stuff around.  I rifled through my drawers feverishly about at my wits end and with no luck as I couldn’t find them.  A few minutes later, I gathered myself and calmly search my drawers again and find the batteries.  I fumbled with the back of the alarm clock trying to pry the battery door open without breaking the cheap plastic.  By this time being rational was something I was finding extremely difficult to accomplish.  Finally I got the back off and with three of four tries, got the battery shoved into the slot, but couldn’t get the cover back on.  I said “to hell with the cover”!  I did a operation check on the new alarm clock and at 10:00 am, it went off as planned. 

 For good measure I set the old alarm clock, the new alarm clock, and my broken wrist watch.  At precisely 4:45 pm, brace yourself- all three alarm clocks went off!  Now who’s got the time?  By golly, I got the freakin’ time!

 Dandy 74.2 miles to go Aaron