Losing a Day to the Date Line

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Allison Villalobos from Riverside, California.

I love your guys’ show, and I’m so excited that you guys took my call.

We are excited to have you on the show, Allison. What is up?

So my husband and I recently got back from a trip to Asia.

We had a stopover in Beijing from Sunday at 10:30 a.m. to Sunday at about 3 p.m.

Then we flew to California, and the flight was about 12 hours, but we landed at Sunday at 11 a.m.

As we were waiting for our ride, it was about Sunday at noon, and we’re thinking about, okay, well, Sunday at noon, we were having lunch in Beijing, but that wasn’t yesterday.

It was today, but it’s not now.

And we realized we just didn’t have any language to talk about what happens when we travel in time from one time zone to another.

Oh, man.

How did you deal with that?

What did you say?

It’s a free day.

I think we just kind of talked ourselves in circles and like, well, it was earlier today, but it’s today.

And then we just laughed about it and had nothing more to say.

Oh, my gosh.

This reminds me, Allison, when I was in ninth grade, I was trying out for a play and I had to memorize something.

And maybe this is useful.

I had to learn this little saying that goes, today was tomorrow yesterday, but today is today today.

Just as yesterday was today yesterday, but yesterday today.

And tomorrow will be today tomorrow, which makes today yesterday and tomorrow all at once.

Oh, my goodness.

Does that help?

We will put that on the website, I promise.

Yeah, I found that in the Bluefield Daily Telegraph archives from 1916.

But anyway, yeah, how do you talk about a day that you’ve already had that you’re now in?

All I can think of is Deja Noon, if it was noon one place.

Or maybe you’re groundhogging.

I don’t know.

That’s not helpful.

Well, I will tell you, Allison, I think science fiction and movies that deal with time travel have a lot to teach us on this.

And there are always these funny moments.

I think there was one in a Terry Pratchett novel where they have this moment when they realize, oh, my, we don’t have the language for this.

But usually they just give up and basically say, if I went through it, it happened already, regardless of what the calendar says.

So it was yesterday, even though on the calendar it’s the same day of the week and the same day of the month.

And that’s just kind of where you go with it.

But like I said earlier, a lot of people just treat those as free days, kind of like these scandalous days where you can do whatever you want.

You blow your rainy day money because you’ve lived it once.

It’s a second chance, right?

It’s a second chance day, another Sunday.

You can say this was literally the longest day of my life.

Yeah, right.

That’s nice.

That’s very nice.

How nice that you could spend it together.

Exactly.

I’m going to put a call out to our listeners.

If you’ve gone through time travel and you’ve encountered this, any time travelers listening, give us a call.

Let us know.

Hit us up on your sensor phone or whatever, and we’ll find out what time travelers actually say when they’re traveling around the universe.

Yeah, I wish we had something more specific to give you, Allison.

Oh, a special message to the doctor.

We’re particularly waiting your call.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much.

I appreciate your time.

All right.

Take care, Allison.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

So, yeah, on shows like Doctor Who, they just kind of, it’s a little giggle here and there, but mostly they just punt on the whole question of when and where.

It is funny, right?

It reminds me of driving down a long main drag in a town in Florida years ago, and the banks all had digital clocks outside.

And for some reason, they weren’t coordinated.

And so the farther I went, the earlier it got.

That was a really weird feeling.

That’s as close as I’ve gotten to crossing the international date line.

Oh, I could do that in my house.

The further I get away from the bedroom, the earlier it is.

Yeah.

So what is the word for that?

What is the word?

We have creative listeners who always come up with stuff that’s fun and funny.

If you have these new words for time travel, 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.