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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 9, 1993                   TAG: 9304090094
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Paul Dellinger
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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TIMELESS ORDEAL

Daylight-saving time and digital watches team up to mess me up twice a year.

My watch is now the old-fashioned kind, dating back centuries to the concept of pointers and numbers. It is easy to adjust. Such watches are making a comeback; a decade ago, it seemed they would go the way of the dinosaur, and a generation of children would not even learn to tell time by them.

But my wife still has some digitals, as does our car, VCR, radio alarm and various little timepieces in the nooks and crannies where we live and work. Sometimes it takes more than a week to track them all down, much less reset them.

My wife is smarter than I am. She just hands me hers to fix.

I should know how by now. But each has its own special procedure of pressing this or that button one time or two times, occasionally in conjunction with another, always with a pin or sewing needle because those recessed buttons are far too small for a clumsy finger to depress. And all that is just to get the proper numbers up so you can then press other buttons to try and adjust them.

Car clocks are even more fun. No two seem to work the same way. But, eventually, I do manage to get them all sprung forward.

Of course, in six months when they fall back, I will once more have forgotten how I did it.

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