Thursday morning, 1:02 AM PST

I like to time things. It's a nerdy little habit that I picked up years ago that manifests itself at odd times. At amusement parks, while waiting for friends to finish up on rides I found too alarming, I would sit on a bench and count the seconds until the next screaming car rocketed by. Eventually, I'd be able to close my eyes and point to the bellowing moron sitting in the second car, third seat back, right side at exactly thirty-seven seconds after the minute. I remind myself of the Clock King villain that I saw once in a Batman cartoon. He could dodge Batman's predictable punches and make his escape on reliably scheduled trains. One of the weaker villains, no doubt, but still the one that I identify with the most.

I once timed the flickering of the street lamp outside my high school as I waited for my father to pick me up from youth group, knowing exactly when it would dim, when it would die, and when it would fire back up. My math teacher was impressed, but then he attended Star Trek conventions in Las Vegas on his family vacations. As much as I disliked him, I still felt bad that he had to wait with me. Obviously, I didn't inherit my timekeeping abilities from my father.

Tonight, I lay in bed transfixed by the mysterious orange pulse of light on my ceiling that blinks once every thirty seconds. Luckily I lost my wristwatch two years ago. Otherwise I'dve been staring at both it's indigo-glowing face and my (as it now turns out to be) smoke detector for the past fifteen minutes. As it is, I'm pretty accurate with my counting anyway; I use the One-Mississippi, Two-Mississippi method.

Why can't I sleep?

Now I'm beginning to realize that this whole timing business is one of the myriad of nervous tics that have plagued me over my lifetime. However, unlike the unrelenting need to rapidly blink in unsatisfiable demanding patterns that tormented me for years, this one has stuck with me into adulthood. I don't really mind this one so much, though. It's always made me feel kind of neat -- like I hold some power over things just by knowing how and when they are going to act.

I only time things when something's bothering me: my embarrassment at making others wait with me, my cowardice when faced with the Magnum XL-200, my inability to pay my student loans. Maybe by knowing when things happen, I'm subconsciously trying to make up for the things I'm powerless against.

It's now 1:45 AM. I suppose I should get back into bed and try to accept the fact that I can't control my life as much as I'd like. Tomorrow, I'll get up and count the minutes between my snooze alarms, the time it takes the toilet to refill, the seconds it takes for traffic lights to switch from yellow to red...