What about the watched clock?
We've all had the experience of finding that time seems to move sluggishly when we're waiting for something, sometimes even seeming almost to grind to a halt.
But what about a clock actually stopping when we look at it.... and then surreptitiously starting up again as soon as we cease paying it any attention?
I swear that happened to me yesterday. I was planning to go out at about 4pm, so looked at the clock in my kitchen at 3.48. I know that was pretty much the correct time because I happened to check another timepiece as well. A few minutes later, I glanced at the kitchen clock again: it didn't seem to have moved, but I didn't pay it close attention - dismissing it as an example of that common time slows down when you're anxious about it phenomenon. Several minutes later, I checked again, and this time the fact that my kitchen clock had not moved on since I started checking it was more glaring, impossible to overlook. Damn - my clock had STOPPED. (Except... it hadn't. It was still ticking loudly, and the second hand was still whirring around the clockface at the appropriate pace; it was just that the hour and minute hands had mysteriously jammed at 3.48 - the exact moment at which I first looked at it that afternoon. I tell you, it was the power of my eyes, my penetrating stare that did it!)
I gave up on using the faulty kitchen clock, and, at about 4.10, began referring to the clock on my computer instead. Just before 4.20, I was finally ready to quit the apartment. I happened to glance at my kitchen clock again just as I was leaving: it had started up again, just as mysteriously as it had suddenly stopped a little while earlier. But the time it displayed was - of course - 22 minutes slow. It had started again at the exact moment that I gave up on it and started referring to another timepiece instead. How spooky is that?
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