FUQ : Why don’t the hands on a clock turn anticlockwise?
FREQUENTLY UNASKED QUESTION (FUQ)
In the following paragraphs, we shall delve into a few of the multitude of highly plausible answers to this intelligent question.
We must admit that our lives revolve around those three hands on a clock. The world is kept from a state of complete disarray because, no matter where you are, clocks tick the same way. As long as the hands on a clock continue to turn, life, as we know it, proceeds. What if, one day, these hands were to tick the other way?
Let us consider the first case. Time remains unaffected. People panic all over the world, attempting to relearn how to tell the time. The smarter ones walk around with mirrors to save themselves the trouble. Children laugh in glee as their parents scratch their heads trying to work out where the hands must point at bedtime. No one ever shows up to meetings on time (not that they did in the first place, it’s just that a better excuse exists, now). Suddenly, mechanics’, electricians’ and clockmakers’ pockets fill as everyone wonders what went wrong. In short, the world sinks into chaos.
Option two, time suddenly begins to move backwards. All progress that mankind has made begins to disappear one day at a time. People become experts at doing the moonwalk. The video to The Scientist is finally understood. But this begins to have severe repercussions on the careful balance maintained in the universe. Now that points can be revisited, the woven fabric of spacetime begins to unravel and the universe sinks into chaos.
And well, we’ve all seen the amount of trouble that can be caused by turning back time with a time turner. One wrong move, and one would land oneself a cell in Azkaban, surrounded by Dementors that distinctly do not resemble a certain Tom Felton. Now that the author has let her mind run wild and gotten these things out of her system, she would like to point out that the shadow of a sun dial, the oldest method of measuring time known to man, turns in, what we call today, the clockwise direction. Man, ever resistant to change, decided that when he threw a few cogs together to produce a magical machine that loves to screw us over, he would stick to the old regime of time telling.
The author would also like to point out that if the hands on a clock turned anticlockwise, wouldn’t that then be clockwise? It would be absurd if the effect were to precede and rule over the cause. Although, once a clock and time begin to turn backwards, doesn’t time itself occur as effect to cause, thereby justifying the hands turning anticlockwise?
On that (awesome) note, the author will leave you to ponder that point and shut up now.
P.S.: I heard that sigh of relief. Rude!
– Kavya Bhavaraju
