The Lost Hour

Once in college, I was at a Halloween party at UC Irvine on the night daylight savings time gives us back an hour of our lives. In my drunken condition, dressed as a football player in my dad's old Nebraska Huskers jersey and fishnets, I fixated. The time change seemed to open up a whole world of possibilities to my adrenaline and alcohol laced state, and my tendency towards dramatics came out in full force.

If we were going to get a whole hour back of our lives, if at 1:59AM the clock switched back to 1:00AM, basically anything we did in that first hour could be wiped away. As if it never happened. A confession, a tryst, a mistake. A bit of sexual confidence. A moment of true honesty. I was totally fascinated by the potential stories, and tried to get my friends to engage in debauchery that could be rendered nonexistent by the turning of the clock.

Of course, nothing remotely interesting actually happened to me in that hour. I didn't exactly have the balls to make something happen, and I was at a party with a bunch of people I barely knew, trying to hide in corners as much as possible. I think I had a last beer and watched a friend of a friend make out with a random, dressed as Emo Minnie Mouse.

Still, this idea sticks with me. I'm sure one day I'll make use of that hour to do something "normal me" would never do. Because even four years later, I really don't have very big balls.

Not that it matters.