I know this is going to come as a shock to a lot of you since you’ve conversed with Amoeba and know him to be an intelligent man, but he cannot tell time. Now, he’ll argue that point and even give you the current time on the clock as proof, but the real proof is in his actions, “I’ll be finished here in 15 minutes,” really means, “Go sit down, it’s going to be at least a half an hour, if not longer.”

To that end I have a wish to buy him one of these Seiko Automatic Watches with an alarm. Now, the thing is, I am going to buy the watch for him, but I am going to keep it. When he gives me a time limit like “fifteen minutes” or “half-an-hour”, I will set the watch for the appointed time and then give it to him. When the alarm rings, his time will be up and he can’t say he wasn’t paying attention and didn’t know.

Now, I don’t really expect that Amoeba will start working any faster, but I am thinking he might become a better judge of time. Then, when he tells me how much time I have, I won’t have to guess what he really means.   If Seiko can’t set him right, nobody can!