The Clock That Moved Too Fast

I realized this on the morning of my thirteenth birthday. I woke up, groggy and disoriented, only to discover that the hour hand had jumped three hours ahead while I slept. I rushed to school, late by my own watch but early by the world’s. Nobody seemed to notice.

Over the next few days, the clock became unpredictable. Minutes stretched into hours when I wanted to linger in a moment. Seconds vanished like whispers when I didn’t want them to. I started to experiment — if I stared at the second hand long enough, could I make the day slow down? Could I make the boring parts vanish?

One afternoon, my little brother accidentally spun the hands backward while playing. Suddenly, my memories rewound with it. I was laughing at breakfast, spilling orange juice, all over again. I realized then: the clock wasn’t broken. It was teaching me something.

Time, I learned, is less about schedules and more about attention. The moments we notice — the ones we linger in — are the ones that matter. And the moments we rush through, trying to escape, vanish anyway.

By the end of the week, I didn’t try to control the clock anymore. I just watched it, letting it teach me how to be present. And for the first time, time felt like mine.