Humor

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Where I'm from, the Pennsylvania Dutch have some marvelous sayings that put life in the right perspective. They have a knack of expressing certain truths in a colorful way.

Some include, "Throw Papa down the stairs his hat," and "Kissing don't last. Cooking do." I am particularly fond of that one. I have often wondered why God put all the calories in the cooking and none in the kissing.

Another saying deserving of thought: "There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us that it hardly behooves any of us to speak ill of the rest of us." There is a whole lot of truth in this one.

One hitting the mark in my life: "The hurrier I go, the behinder I get." Sometimes I think most of my life is behind. The more I do the less I get accomplished.

Of course, if I was smart, and I'm not, I would do nothing and get everything done. I just do not know how this works. Once I figure it out, watch out.

It's not that I do not try to keep a firm grip on my agenda; actually there are times when I actually am on schedule.

Of course, it happens so rarely that when it occurs I am so stunned it knocks me off my schedule again. It seems the harder I try to keep up, the farther behind I find myself.

Then, just when I think I am ahead of the game, daylight savings time begins and I lose an hour. How is a person to keep up with all this meddling?

I have tried all kinds of things to maintain some semblance of order in my life. I must confess, though, the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage beats me in this area hands down.

The secret of her punctuality is one of those mysteries of life that husbands, like myself, never understand. Believe me, I have taken time to think this through and evaluate her remarkable ability in this area.

She is always on schedule and never misses an appointment (at least she has not owned up to any misses which causes me to speculate, but never out loud). I often wondered how she did this, especially when all the children were at home.

After years of wondering I discovered her secret by accident; she tricks her brain into believing the time is 15 minutes earlier.

Here's how it works. She sets all the clocks in the house at least 15 minutes ahead of the real time. That way she is always ahead of schedule.

When we were first married, unbeknownst to me, she set her plan into action. It took me several years to discover this peculiarity of my new bride.

How a person can trick her brain like this is beyond me. It must have something to do with female genes or something.

If I had a brain, I would treat it with more respect.

Not knowing the clocks deliberately had been set 15 minutes ahead, I spent one entire morning going around resetting each clock in the house to the precise time.

If I despise anything, it is a clock that does not tell the right time. I may not be on time but my watch always has the correct time.

Did you ever count how many clocks the average household has? At the time of the big clock switcheroo, our house had about 76 clocks. It seemed we had attached everything to some kind of timepiece.

What a time I had, trying to get every clock in the house synchronized. I never did get the VCR set right.

Not wanting to tell my spouse how I spent the morning, I kept it a secret. After all, some things are best left unsaid, right? My policy has always been, what my wife does not know she can't blame me for.

That was on a Monday, the beginning of a whole week of disasters. For some reason we were late for everything. This flustered my wife, who prided herself on always being on time.

Even when it came to delivering our babies, she was on time. Within an hour-and-a-half of getting to the hospital, she would be finished with the baby business.

But now, things were different. She was late for everything and could not understand why.

Being the typical husband I am, I could not help her. I had no idea why her punctuality suddenly had been compromised.

By midmorning on Saturday, my good wife finally figured out the problem and said with a great deal of exasperation, "Who changed the time on the clocks?"

She looked at me with one of those looks familiar to all husbands, the kind indicating she knew the identity of the culprit and he was wearing my trousers at the time. Meanwhile, I was in hot water.

At first, I did not get the drift of the situation. In my male-blindness, I assumed I was doing a good thing by setting the clocks to the right time.

However, in every good deed there is at least one snag.

Americans are obsessed with time. The correct time, that is.

The Apostle Paul had a concern about time. He wrote, "And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." (Romans 13:11 KJV.)

The correct time is now. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, now.

Rev. Snyder's new book, "Romance Around a Parsonage Fireplace," is now available at www.jamessnyderministries.com.

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