Hey Scott: What’s Your Favorite Time of Day?
The latest in a series where I write about whatever someone tells me to write about.
This series began when I told my friend I could probably write about 500 words, give or take, on pretty much any topic presented to me. If you’d like me to write about something, feel free to email me at srm5082@gmail.com.
“Hey Scott, you should write about your favorite time of day.”
My favorite time of the day is when the clock strikes 2:37 p.m.
Which is somewhat surprising, as the first-thought response to such a prompt would be 11:11, either a.m. or p.m. Because who doesn’t love the song “Konstantine” by Something Corporate, and who doesn’t like making a wish when they catch the clock at the exact right time? But that song is actually about cheating on someone (mostly), and wishing for things hasn’t gotten me too far on its own (mostly).
Close runner-up would be 4:20 p.m. For obvious reasons. (I smoke weed because I am so cool.) Followed by 5 p.m., which is when you’re supposed to be able to clock out and head to happy hour if you don’t have too many responsibilities filling up your docket. But any hour can be happy hour if you just believe, and have a bottle of Bushmills at your side. (This is, of course, if you’re not in a position where you may have to operate any heavy machinery or, you know, have to care about anyone but yourself.)
2:37, though? That’s my moment, baby. Has been since adolescence, and like so many things from that time, for better or worse, it has some serious staying power. I reckon it might always be my most-adored portion of the whole 24.
It sounds like an arbitrary time. And 237, if you have the guts to take the colon out, sounds like an arbitrary number. Like three digits I just randomly pulled out of a hat or something that don’t really make all that much sense, especially when seemingly smashed together for no discernible reason. It’s not a number you’d see on a basketball jersey. Maybe a marathon bib or motocross sign affixed to a bike, but that’s about it.
However, like most anything I spend a lot of time thinking about, it has a great deal of meaning attached to it, while simultaneously making next to no sense.
We’ll start with how 237 is something of a lucky number. Nothing more. And luck is just another thing that doesn’t make much sense. It’d be counterintuitive to say that it does. It’s a lucky number that doesn’t even belong to me (as if a number would ever bow to ownership; numbers aren’t something you can stake a claim to or whatever — I mean, consider the unchecked fact that the number 23 is the most widely worn and coveted basketball number, when it should be owned by, if anyone, Michael Jordan and Michael Jordan alone).
It was my Grandpap’s lucky number, and he was, by all accounts, a pretty lucky dude. I dunno the particular stats, but would venture to say his gambling ways ended pretty firmly in the black. How or why he settled on this number i haven’t the faintest clue, and will never know — unless I am completely wrong about the prospects of the kind of afterlife I’d love to experience where he could give me a cogent explanation, if there is one. That would be supremely dope. But I am not optimistic. I want to believe in that sort of thing, desperately wish I could, but it ain’t for me.
I didn’t know it was his lucky number when it became my favorite part of day, though. 2:37 p.m. became fully my shit when I was in middle school because it was the time the bell rang to signal the end of the school day.
The time when the day really got started.
The time when you could quit all that fancy book learnin’ — or whatever version of it they were shillin’ in western Pennsylvania at the time; I don’t know because I didn’t pay attention, mostly because I was somewhat clandestinely educating myself via writers I liked…I’m more of a Klosterman stan than Bronte sisters fan — and get into what you were actually into.
Like reading even more from writers you liked on your own time.
Heading to the comic book store for Wednesday releases.
Driving over to a girl’s place for some hanky-panky when her parents were still at work and hoping that her dad wouldn’t come home early, see your car and pull a shotgun out the bed of his truck to threaten you with. (This never happened to me. Nope. Definitely not.)
Smoking a few darts with your best friends while you drove around and did fuck-all. Maybe with a stop at a local Kings or Eat n’ Park to get some chicken tenders, which tend to pair well with copious amounts of nicotine ingested quickly.
Going home to do homework so you could go to college and experience something different than, looks around, all of this, and finding that a certain assignment actually piqued your interest to the point you got after it so diligently that you wanted to do more, and would eventually do more, setting yourself up for the university studies you would complete that would lead to you doing something for a living that you were actually passionate about.
Or going to basketball practice because you loved the game more than anything else at the time.
Etcetera, etcetera. Fill in the blanks with your own stuff, if you want. I think I’ve illustrated what I’m getting at here, which is essentially being able to follow your bliss, whatever that means to you. (Or heading to an after-school job that would help you earn the cash to eventually follow some sort of bliss.)
You ever left school grounds on a Friday just after 2:37 while blasting a song like Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light?” When the whole weekend is ahead of you, rife with possibility and fraught with the teenage angst you actually liked, that made you feel really alive?
Because that’s a momentous, transcendent occasion. A vibe that cannot, no matter how hard you try, be replicated, or replaced. Not even by an adult money payday.
Something dies when you grow older, but you do the best you can.
These days, 2:37 p.m. hits at (maybe) about halfway through my workday. So it’s not quite as celebratory. But it brings a feeling over me that I can’t quite articulate. A joy that’s tough to find. A nostalgic reminder that once you get through the shit that comes with having do deal with the mundane, the droll, the things that may feel crushing to your soul, you get to start all over again — make another day to add on to the one that already exists.
I find a lot of comfort in that.
