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Last night at the scout meeting, I noticed the clock on the wall was half an hour slow, when it had been correct just an hour or so earlier. So I got the stepladder out and pulled the clock off the wall to fix it. It had the usual knob on the back to change the time, and it also had a small digital clock on the back that was wired to the motor that ran the big analog clock on the front. I set the clock using the manual knob so it told the correct time. It occurred to me that the batteries were also getting low, so I put some new batteries in there.
The clock immediately began to run very fast. It covered a minute in 4 seconds. Hands going like crazy.
The little digital clock on the back was set for a different time than the analog clock on the front, and I assumed that the analog clock would stop running fast when it caught up to the digital clock, but it didn't. It kept going.
It was really confusing, so I set the digital clock to the correct time and let the analog clock speed up to catch that correct digital clock time, hoping it would work. Except even though it was running very fast, it was going to take about 15 minutes to go the 11 odd hours forward to the correct time.
So I put the fast running clock back up to on the wall, and put the ladder back into the closet. I didn't say a word about it. But soon, a boy noticed the fast running clock on the wall, telling the wrong time. He told a friend,and so on. Pretty soon, there were 30 boys just standing there staring and pointing at the clock and laughing.
It felt like an eternity, but at closing circle, just as the meeting was ending, the analog clock finally caught up to the digital clock and the clock slowed down to normal speed and told the correct time. And I had to make an announcement to point it out to the troop.
In hindsight, I should have just changed the batteries and not touched the dial.
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