Missing Time

It's not bad enough that I have to be up before the chickens. If it was just that I could probably cope. Christ, if you didn't know me you'd think that I was some kind of farmer -- but that's a different sort of smell entirely.

No, I'm just your average, unambitious, good-for-nothing corporate whore -- but I still have to get up at 4:00am everyday. What a sick, sad life I live. But I'll tell you more about that some other time.

Today's story is something more akin to a segment you would have seen on Leonard Nimoy's "In Search Of" or even more recently that Unsolved Mysteries show with what's-his-name, you know the guy who played Eliot Ness on the Untouchables.

Anyway...

Like any other day my alarm clock goes off and it takes me a few minutes to realize what's going on before I hit the snooze button and finally stumble out of bed, except something felt different today and didn't quite understand why; at least I didn't understand until I finally heard the alarm go off.

When I finally opened my eyes enough to see the burning red digits of the clock, that sits menacingly on my bedside table I noticed that it was 5:21am.

Shit !

I was going to be late. Very late.

In a frenzy of panic and unconsciousness I grabbed whatever clothes I could find, got dressed and dashed out of the house in hopes of minimizing my tardiness. Fortunately for me, if I make it in early enough I'm the only one there and no one would be the wiser.

On the road I make my usual stop at the 7-11 for my morning wake me up. You know what I mean, the coffee that's got the sting of the 48 hour blend; the kind of coffee that can burn a hole right through the formica. In my frenzied but rather soporific state I mistakenly poured and purchased a Raspberry Vanilla flavored coffee and nearly ran myself off the road after the first sip.

I cannot express in words the vile construct that is the flavored coffee. I wish a pox on the houses of those who invented it and will not be satisfied until we return to the Holy Trinity of coffee !!

Like the Father, Son and Holy Spirit it should always be:

Coffee, Coffee Regular and Coffee Sweet (That's Black, Black + 2 sugars and Black with 2 cream and 2 sugars for all you blasphemous sons-a-bitches out there)

Trying to ignore the raspberry-vanilla death taste in my mouth I switch on my regular AM radio companion, but I don't hear the ever familiar news anchors giving me the ever depressing state of the nation and traffic situation here in Omaha. No. Something was wrong. I glance at the clock on the dashboard. It's dimly lit and hard to read, which is why I didn't notice it at first, but as I focused on the little LCD display I saw that it was actually 4:20am

4:20am?? That can't be right! The cheap-ass little clock I bought at the Walgreen's must have a dead battery or something.

No. Bottom of the hour station identification and time mark tells me the truth. It was indeed 4:20 (now 4:30) am.

I don't have to be to work until 6:00am

I desperately wanted my two hours back but they had been lost forever. I have no explanation for why my alarm went off at 5:21am and can only suspect that I had been adducted by a group of rather inept aliens. Perhaps they were new? Maybe this was their first big abduction or maybe it's some other alien species trying to get in on the whole abduction craze. Maybe it's some kind of inter-stellar scavenger hunt and I got a visit from the last place team. I really don't have a clue.

I am going to set up a camera or something tonight, just in case they come back. I figure if they were stupid enough to botch the missing time thing then they might not notice, or even know, what a camera is -- and that my friends could be ol' Ted Killgore's ticket out of this middle-management hell.

Of course, I'm not going to be able to take my Vicodin and Ativan like I did last night; because if those alien bastards do come back the last thing I need is to be all drugged up and confused. That however, is a story for another time.

This story ends in the most anti-climactic way you can imagine. I decided, early as it was to make my way to the office. The worst that could happen is I would have an hour (maybe) to catch up on some work without being interrupted. Halfway to the office I realized that the familiar radio personalities didn't sound quite so familiar. Initially I figured that was just a symptom of being up to early and not a regular listener to talk radio at this hour. However, as the station broke for the news (just as I pulled into the office parking lot no less) the news anchor started his report with the top stories for SATURDAY...

FUCKING SATURDAY?

I decided it was in my best interest to feign some heart palpitations so I could get a few hours of sleep in the Emergency Room rather than make the drive home right away. A few small annoyances aside, I was quite happy with my medically supervised nap.