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Jack Bauer wouldn’t be happy about this … and if you remember Jack Bauer, you know you wouldn’t want to make him mad. Jack — no one ever called him “Bauer” — was the unstoppable force (of a shadowy government agency) whose job it was to save the world in 24 hours … without a second to spare from the ever-present red countdown clock that kept viewers of the TV drama “24” on the edge of their couch. Jack saved the world eight times in eight days over eight seasons. He didn’t eat, he rarely slept, he never watched “Dancing With the Stars.” If someone approached him with a cellphone and asked him whether a voice was saying “Yanny” or “Laurel,” he’d shoot the phone … and then the guy holding it. All Jack had was Chloe in his ear and those precious 86,400 seconds. Or, so he thought. Turns out that, all this time, energy companies had been auto-correcting our clocks so that we had the false sense of security that we all were dancing through the same, exact moment in time. Now, after a request from a nefarious power organization that we’ll call NERC, the process has stopped and our clocks (at least, those running on electricity) have been gaining and losing seconds willy-nilly in order to keep things in balance. Relatively speaking. “Why don’t you it explain it to me,” Jack once growled. “You’ve got five seconds.” Ummm ... I would be a lousy Jack Bauer. I gave up keeping track of time years ago. Well, to be exact, a little over 42 years ago. It was winter, I was walking across my college campus, slipped on a patch of black ice and landed square on my pocket watch (it was the ‘70s) … smashing it to smithereens. And I haven’t owned a watch since. Why bother? Especially since we keep screwing around with what we optimistically call the correct time. Leap seconds. … Daylight Saving. … The Julian calendar. And those of us who aren’t Jack are supposed to care about a few seconds here or there? Besides, all our gizmos inform us of what time they want us to think it is … why add any extra pressure of knowing it for ourselves? Our DVR is particularly good at this, especially if we are trying to record a program at 9 o’clock, and the 8 o’clock show we’re recording runs to 9:01. There’s that 60 seconds where, unless you turn the TV off, you have to make some sort of decision between a pair of bad, illogical options — leaving you time to vent your frustrations before watching something else at 9:02. In the United Kingdom, meanwhile, schools are trying to alleviate the stress on students by doing away with analog clocks — you know, those things with hour hands, minute hands and second hands (which are really third hands … but let’s not go there). The idea is that students taking exams will glance at the clock, wonder why the hands are pointing to Super Bowls and World Wars, then become so nervous they can’t think straight. (And, if that’s the stress school kids feel in the UK … we’ll trade.) We do better with years. In most of the world, it’s 2018. In China, it’s the year 4716. According to the Hebrew calendar, it’s the year 5778. In Washington, D.C., some see the makings of 1933. But, for the most part, we agree on years, months, days of the week. Sure, I’m writing this on Friday for you to read on Sunday (or later, if at all), but that’s to be expected from someone who works in a business where we work today so that tomorrow you can read what happened yesterday. When it comes to actual “time,” though, we expect our clocks to be more in sync than the ones in Doc Brown’s garage. And look at the mess he made. There’s a cougar roaming around the streets of Ashland — much like the mountain lion that was stalking Jack Bauer’s daughter Kim (known to “24” fans as “the character no one cares about”) in Los Angeles. You think that mountain lion cares that NERC has decided to throw caution to the wind over a few seconds? Doubtful, particularly since he doesn’t have pockets in which to keep his watch. That cougar knows when it’s time to eat, time to wander aimlessly around town, and time to sleep. Give him a bad back and a permanent 5 o’clock shadow, and he could be my father. 00:05 ... 00:04 ... 00:03 ... 00:02 … 00:01 ... Those of you who incorrectly hear “Laurel” can contact Mail Tribune senior designer Robert Galvin at [email protected].