11 11

There is a line in a song by a band called Something Corporate, that goes "I always check the clock, it's 11:11." Now, I am not sure about two things, first what the hell that line means to the moron who is singing it, and secondly how I came upon such a band. However, I am sure of one thing, and this is going to be a trip into the weirdness that is my mind, so be prepared dear readers.

11/11 as a date is certainly familiar to students of history, and back when I was a younger and more clever lad, I was a student of history, but that is not how the number is important to this particular tale. The important of 11:11 is as a time, at least in the twisted part of the story that I am trying to relate. The date DOES have a significance to me, and people who know me well enough (and where there on that major day in my life), will understand what that importance is, and why the rest of this story freaks me the fuck out a bit.

That day happened a little bit over four years ago, and it was not a date in which I covered myself in glory. It was, upon calm reflection, the day that I made one of the biggest miscalculations of my miserable life.  There were a lot of people who knew me there, and in theory they could have prevented my error, but the reality is they really were not in a position to prevent my mistake. And, it was my mistake, and it is one that I should own, and one that I knew, at the time, I was making. The good news, if there is any good news is that the mistake is mostly over. I say mostly, because there are two lingering issues from the fateful day that continue to 'haunt' me to this day.

This post will only deal with one of those two issues, and it is the weirder of the two. I said that the mistake happen on the day 11/11, but the numbers 11:11 are how I am reminded of the date everyday. You see, I don't wear a watch, I check the time by my cell phone, and my alarm clock. And almost everyday for about 2 years with very few exceptions, I check the time on my cell phone at 11:11 (a.m. usually, but sometimes p.m.), and this is NOT intentional. When it first started happening I thought it was a little odd, but nothing too weird. As it continued to happen it started to freak me out a bit, now that it has been happened for almost 2 years it is beyond weird.

It has begun to become a part of my day, like the daily rituals that we all go through just to get ourselves together to get to work, school, or the horse track, it has become something that I have become to expect to do.  In fact, if I somehow (rarely) manage to miss checking the clock, and it being 11:11, I almost feel disappointed, like I have let myself down in some odd way.  It is almost like a parlor trick, something that I could be local slack jawed gawkers that I could do without trying. I should try it for about a week, and see if I could make enough money to allow me to retire to the south of France. I don't know what this ability curse means to my psyche, mainly because I have too afraid (until now) to think too much about it. I have a feeling that if I did take the time to trundle off to Dr. Kronenburg, he would tell me a few 'home truths' that I would not want to hear. 

Those truths might just be more that I can bear, and I don't like taking on more than I can bear.  I have not done a particularly good job at explaining how weird I find this little phenomenon. It still creeps me out a bit, and when I try to explain it to people, they look at me like I am a mental patient. As I mentioned I don't know what the line in the song meant to that fellow who wrote it, but I am quite sure that he didn't mean for his line to become such a meaningful part of my life. I hope where ever he may be that he is being eaten by crabs proud of himself.