Military time = Stupid

When I first moved here everyone in my office laughed at me for several reasons, but one of them was because I kept trying to change all of my electronics into normal time. I kept asking them why everything was in military time and they were like, military time? oh...you mean TIME. Yeah, that's because that's how the clock works. I said, actually gen Y-ers...before the clock went digital, there were just 12 numbers on a wall. It seemed to work out for everyone pretty well then, I think we can get along with just 12 numbers ourselves...why complicate things?

Well they choose to anyway. I've come up with a good way of remembering most of the numbers:
13 = 1 because its right after 12
15 = 3 because 3 times 5 is 15
16 = 4 because 4 times 4 is 16
18 = 6 because they kind of look alike
24 = 12 because...well duh.

So the ones in the middle are the ones that really get me. Yes, I know you can just subtract 12, but that takes some sort of conversion and I don't have time for that. MOST of the time I'm pretty good at it. My microwave and oven timers can't go to 12 hours, so at home I have my cell phone on my body at all times. At work my computer is on military time and I can't figure out how to change it (I've tried all the obvious ways, its not in control panel either).

I thought I was getting really good at it, until today. Eddie left at 14:48 for a call. I said, geez he's leaving a bit early, but then realized why. He had to go do his job. For some reason though, the 14 stuck in my head as 4 (because I don't have a rule for this number!). So by the time 15:40 rolled around, I thought I was being a big baller for staying so late. At 15:57 I emailed a friend who I'm meeting for drinks tonight and said, "Look I know you have to work until 6 but I'm going to head to the bar now and get us a table. Where should I go?" I shut down all my programs except email and was about to close that when I got his response: Wow, a bit early isn't it? Ok well how about (insert bar here)?


I read his email like 3 times, looked at the clock again. Stared at it, and then said, Oh my god. It was 3:57, not 5:57. Fmylife. Now I have to kill the next two hours already having mentally shut down. If we just stuck with 12 numbers this would never happen. Why complicate things with more numbers? Is AM and PM really that hard to figure out?