The Unusual Paradox of Mr. Chen Chen — an ageless tale
If you never believed in the parodies of life, then you were in for a surprise when you met Monsieur Chen-Chen.
It would certainly be a distant whiff of empathy to see how you could be taken by utter shock at his mannerisms and extreme gesticulations. He would twirl and turn and spin a dramatic dance.
Upon your first meet, he would most likely begin with the exaggerated story of being the mastermind within the victories of Alexander’s triumphs, and the modernization of Newfoundland. And in case you lasted till his final poems in the keys of B minor ended, then you could be wooed by the cantata medley he usually swung into his deliveries.
You see, Monsieur Chen-Chen was born in a time when clocks had only just been invented, and men from both ends of the world were only starting to number their days. The early periods were chaotic; some men had six days in a week, others eleven and some even fifty. The case of how many hours were to be in a day was a much terrible matter on its own.
Workplaces were a marketplace. Bosses were at a loss to wage distributions, and the local council for employment meetings consisted of jeers and sneers.
One voice would suddenly yell, it’s getting late, we’ve been here all week, whilst the chairman insisted that only an hour had gone by, by his estimations, of course. Such was the scene of like meetings everywhere.
By mid-second century, the governments of the world had had just about enough of the nonsense, and Chen-Chen was called in after all experts had been summoned and spoiled.
Chen-Chen wasted no hours in effecting changes to the time matter, and in no time, he had brewed in place a system that would last for weeks -years if you count it in today’s time.
Chen-Chen postulated in no unclear terms these conditions:
That time was relative and needed no definite measure.
That one’s time was half of what one’s immediate neighbour’s time was.
That one’s time was a direct count of one’s total steps taken since the last time one lost count.
That one’s final time at the close of the day could only be determined at the beginning of the next day.
The world was enthralled by the ‘Chen-Chen Mean Time’, as it became known as. Mainly because rebellion to this time standard was punished by having to count the times of others. An arduous task indeed that deterred a rather lazy persons, and also because of its sheer simplicity.
However, Chen-Chen was soon spoiled like most of the experts before him, but not before his fame had reached to the ends of the world. For you see, there was no place that he could go without a finger or call in his direction.
‘See the man who almost ruined time’, or ‘Chen-Chen Mean Time, my foot’… followed by a spit.
This kind of rejection could have cost him his life, but not this Chen-Chen fellow.
Nowhere was he not found brewing up a new story about his awesomeness. And it worked. For though it was a while before any new Time Standard was introduced, the end of the century saw the Romans conquer most parts of the world, in the process appointing Chen-Chen as ‘Chief Time-Keeper’ and declaring that all clock-makers incorporated Tick-Tock sounds into their mechanisms.
So today when you hear the clock tick, and the church bells chime, remember good old Chen-Chen Tickitocko (yes, that was his full name), and how he imagined before anyone else the time we know today.
Some research findings argue that if the world had stuck with the Chen-Chen Mean Time, we could all be half our ages. Well, who wouldn’t want to be younger!
