This past weekend, Wanda James, the mother of 32-year-old Tucker James in Nashville, Tennessee, failed to remind Tucker to set his clock an hour ahead as the area returned to regular Central Standard Time, causing him to almost miss a coffee date with a friend he’d been aiming to catch up with for ages.
“She totally dropped the ball,” said Tucker, shaking his head. “She knows I’m no newshound. If she doesn’t tell me, how am I supposed to find out about these things?”
Fortunately, technology gave Tucker just enough of a clue about the time shift that he was spurred to inquire further. His cell phone had updated the time automatically. And even though all of the clocks in his house displayed the usual time, making his cell phone seem to be the outlier, Tucker’s intuition told him to do a quick internet search. In this manner, he discovered the time change on his own – in time, but only barely, to meet his friend Tim for coffee as planned.
“I had to skip my shower,” said Tucker, “but fortunately I made it over there.”
On her part, Wanda James explained that she considered warning Tucker about the time change, but didn’t want to imply that she thought him incapable of taking care of himself. “He always tells me that I baby him," said Wanda. "So I figured I’d trust him to handle this life detail on his own. He's a grown man, after all.”
Tucker says he hopes that tough love was, in fact, the reason that his mother failed to remind him about the time change – and not that she, herself, forgot. “I just hope it's not a case of early dementia,” he said. “I worry about her."
