The mechanical timer

The mechanical timer sits near my mother's computer. It is old and cheap -- it doesn't have a name brand. It is shaped like a hockey puck or a small ice cream sandwich, which is to say, it is round. The winding handle/indicator is reminiscent of a sundial-- no, a retractable utility knife. It is old, and the tip is painted in red, and it is faded. The paint looks like a trickle of freshly drawn blood.

My mother keeps it there to facilitate being on time. It works imperfectly -- both the strategy and the timer itself. Sometimes, there is no bell that goes off at the end; it ticks away toward 60, and sputters out.

As a child, I remember playing with these. I found that setting the timer for very short times led to poor performance and, sometimes, no bell at the end. I remember discovering that you can force the dial to make it go past 60 counterclockwise, negative numbers, even though the machinery would groan and quiver in protest.

I'm sitting here, listening to it. Sometimes I'll force it to run faster, and there's a distinctive gallop, a second, quieter, but double-paced beat that comes from some small, hidden gear straining to keep up with a larger one.

Sometimes, I'll try to slow it down, and if I get it just right, the mechanism grows quieter, quieter, until it is still. It's delicate, because it resists being stationary, unless of course it's completely wound down.

It resists running backward, mightily. It does so only very slowly, and very noisily. I don't even know if it's actually running backward. Maybe it's only winding, with some gear clicking frantically, futilely.

I'll probably break the damn thing.

It's dirty, too, though I don't think it's ever seen use in a kitchen.

Right now, it is so inexplicably important to me.

But despite that, I won't take it apart. I won't watch the gears. I'm just not curious. It'll sit in that crappy opaque plastic casing, maybe forever.