I describe my incredible internal clock in my memoir, but the story is of good length for a blog, so I’ll retell it here. First a bit of necessary background.

My mother died at age 37. I was 13 at the time, the oldest of four children. Our dad, with his taste for alcohol and absences, wasn’t a particularly nurturing parent, so we four kids were taken in by our maternal grandparents in the small town of Java, SD.

My grandfather, Jacob Schafer, had quit farming to work as the sole janitor for the Java school building, a sizeable structure that housed grades 1 through 12. I began helping him after school, sweeping rooms and emptying waste baskets, earning a small hourly wage for my efforts. I continued this work until my senior year of high school when I switched from sweeping floors to shoveling coal.

Grandpa was seventy-three by then, and as the winter deepened he found it increasingly burdensome to fill the stoker of the school’s furnace with coal every morning, so I took on that job. I set my alarm clock an hour earlier than usual and fumbled into coal-darkened jeans before looping over to the school to shovel the half a ton of coal chips needed to fill the hopper of the stoker, an amount that would last until the next morning when I repeated the process. After finishing my shoveling, I went back home to clean up and change clothes before breakfast. I paced my preparations by glancing at the mantel clock in the dining room a time or two (I was a few years away from having a watch of my own), and headed back to school, always at the last minute.

First evidence of my internal clock

It was during my first morning rushes to school that I discovered my incredible inner clock. On two consecutive mornings, at the very instant I stepped on the sidewalk in front of the school, the first bell rang, a signal for students to head for their class rooms. This astonishing feat prompted me redouble my efforts for precision. I became addicted to maintaining my accuracy, scrupulously planning each phase of my activities, pacing myself during each step of the way, casting occasional glances on the mantel clock to fine-tune my internal chronometer, although the clock soon became unnecessary. With my carefully monitored routines I achieved a miraculous accuracy. Morning after morning, just as my foot touched the school sidewalk, the first bell rang. My internal clock had developed atomic precision, an accomplishment that gave me enormous pride. Admittedly, there were occasional days that I reached the sidewalk out of sync, and the bell failed to ring as I stepped onto the concrete, but for most mornings, about four out of every five, the bell and I were in sync. It gave me an eerie feeling, this unusual capability of mine.

I told no one about my internal mastery, for I doubted anyone would believe me. But I was quite proud of my inherent ability, an inborn skill I thought somewhat comparable to having perfect pitch, or a photographic memory. I used my astonishing precision for only a few months. As warm weather appeared, the furnace was no longer needed, so my coal shoveling duties ended. I slept longer each morning and eased my way through more relaxing early hours, losing my zeal for precision. But an awareness of my amazing inner clock lingered. I sensed it snoozing in the background, ready to be awakened and snapped into action.

Further information

Some decades later at a school reunion I happened to meet Harold Spiry, the man who had been superintendent of our high school, and the one who had rung the school bell by pressing a buzzer in his office. During our conversation my mind flashed back to what once had been my morning routine, and I couldn’t resist bragging. I told him of how well I had ordered my complex morning work during my senior year, how despite my lengthy string of morning duties, my timing had been impeccable, how morning after morning I had stepped on the school’s sidewalk just as the bell rang.

“Oh that,” he said, his eyes narrowing as he thought back to that time. “Do you recall that my desk and office windows looked out over the front of the building? I could see you coming. When you hit the sidewalk, I rang the bell.”