A matter of minutes
In the episode of the Twilight Zone called “A Matter of Minutes”, a suburban couple wake up to building noises and while their clock radio says past 11 a.m., the husband’s watch says just past 7 a.m.
The noises continue, he goes downstairs and comes upon a work team of blue men who are taking things out of their house, bringing things in and shifting other things.
The explanation [spoiler ahead] is ingenious – they’ve woken up in the wrong minute – they’ve jumped in time and that particular minute they’re in hasn’t been constructed yet. Every single minute in time needs to be built complete and sometimes the workmen make mistakes.
The Pencil
This is explained at 4:55 of the 2nd part when hubby asks if the foreman ever makes mistakes and he admits they do. That’s why car keys, for example, suddenly go missing and then, maybe minutes later or maybe next day or week, mysteriously turn up. You could have sworn that you’d checked that place.
This evening, I was doing a bit of designing to take the mind off the tooth situation and I put the plastic pencil with the filler lead, together with the eraser, ruler and calculator, onto the clipboard with the A4 paper and then put the whole thing off the bed onto the floor and got up. Then I went and took care of some biz and came back but the pencil had gone.
All the usual things then happened – I checked under the bed, around it, took it apart and shook the bedding etc. etc. I checked the table and the little table I keep under the laptop, checked around, over under and so on. Everything was taken apart until it was laid out on the bare carpet. I got down on hands and knees and looked over the carpet, dividing it into foot square sections.
Zilch. Not a sausage.
I went to get my blue pencil [this one had been grey] and got back to the designing, then went and ate, did a few things, came back and watched part of a Poirot but the pain started again so I went to the kitchen and sorted that out then came back, flopped onto the bed, looked down on the floor and there, at an angle, was the grey pencil.
Yes.
Filed under: Diversions
Well I’m glad you found the pencil but I fear you may have lost some of your marbles
James Higham has entered the Twilight Zone.
on the subject of the show, it is 50 years since it was first broadcast. One of the truly great tv shows
We have Black Holes at my house that are responsible. Between Twilight Zone and the film Dark City the truth is out there!
Those sort of things happen to me all the time…
Was probably stuck up your sleeve, fell out unnoticed, that kind of thing. Or it could be the fairies of course – they do that kind of stuff all the time just for a laugh. One or other of these will be the rational answer, there always is one
Well, you know, the reason I posted on this one was that on the occasions when it does happen, I can’t be sure I didn’t do something to cause it but this time I certainly put it down with the other things on top of the clipboard and that whole thing on the floor.
It’s a bit unfair to post when you can’t see the room but it is pretty sparse and there is the bed which has a duvet and sheet and then the table with the laptop on it. The bed has no crannies – it’s basically a glorified mattress so it was easy to strip it down.
That’s the thing – there was nowhere for the varmint to go. Now I have, before, looked for things and found them in my hand [Andrew's marbles allusion] and the bottom line this time is that I was prepared for this and all my foibles.
I then sat at a distance from the ground zero on the floor and stared at it, the floorspace and went through every permutation and combination I could think of. One of those was that I had inadvertently taken it to the kitchen.
I passed my hand over a one metre square where it might have fallen, in case it was a trick of the light. Not a sausage. I lifted up the bed on its side and then up from there onto its corner point – intrigued by now. Then I went to the kitchen.
When I came back in, there was no bedding on the bed – that had been put on a chair in the corner of the room. So there was a table and a bed and I lay on the bed and did some designing with the second pencil. I looked over at the floor where my hand had passed over before and there it was, just lying there.
I tell you it was mighty puzzling.